Lest We Be Forgotten
by Spartan-711
Summary: An Outer Colony world is under siege by the Covenant. A resourceful band of UNSC soldiers are marooned on the dying planet, struggling to regroup and desperately trying to escape. Their goal is to get offworld, but when the very safety of humankind is put at risk by their actions, they'll stop at nothing to ensure that their species is saved, whether they survive...or not.
1. The Battle of Coira

**Hello! First of all, thank you for reading. This fanfiction has been an idea of mine for years, now. It's not the most original story, but I'm proud of it. Hopefully, any Halo fan well-versed in the lore of this incredible universe will be able to get into the minds of the characters, and feel what their struggles are like. The finished work will have about nine chapters, each around 5,000 words in length. I've tried to make it as realistic and enjoyable as possible. The Halo universe does, however, belong to 343 Industries, and a few of the characters involved in this story were created by them or Bungie. Otherwise, this is my tale; a Halo work of literacy written as a tribute the military sci-fi franchise that we all know and love. Now, to the main event. Enjoy!**

August 1, 2548

UNSC frigate _Avenger_ (FFG-405) in orbit over Endymion

The young woman breathed heavily, and looked once more around the tiny pod. There was her assault rifle, right beside her, and an SMG on the other side; there was the Lieutenant, giving some rousing speech, surely, on the tiny vidscreen; there was the voice of the _Avenger's_ AI (what had his name been again?) counting down for the drop. She had done this dozens of times before...but, still, so many things could go wrong. What happened if a Banshee or a Seraph picked off her drop pod? What if her stabilizers didn't activate? The young woman closed her eyes and began to pray. She heard the distant sounds, coming steadily closer, as her teammates dropped. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. She thought of her parents, bless their souls, and of her poor brother. They were gone; gone forever. If she died, then at least she'd be with them. Then, her time came: her pod fell free of the UNSC _Avenger_ , and dropped quickly through the inky blackness of space. Around her, two titanic forces clashed for supremacy of a world she had never before seen.

Endymion, home to about nine and a half million people. A Covenant fleet, about a dozen ships strong, was trying to reduce it to ash and cinders. The UNSC only had a few ships in the area, which were quickly destroyed, but reinforcements had arrived soon afterwards and managed to stall the alien advance. She was part of a team ordered to defend the planet's civilian spaceports, to ensure that as many people as possible got off Endymion before the Covenant inevitably glassed it. She knew they would. Not because she doubted the might of the UNSC military, but because the Covenant were simply better. The war had started twenty-three years ago, and hundreds of human worlds had been lost.

She descended through the atmosphere, and listened as her team bantered. Why weren't they afraid? How could they be joking? Lives were on the line, including theirs. The woman shook her head and bit her lower lip. She tried to calm her hyperventilation, but to no avail. Her pod rocked as it fell through the clouds. Truly, it was a sight to behold: a sea of white, graceful clouds; below that, a clear blue sky. She took it all in before looking towards the small meter that was counting down in bright cyan numbers. Twenty thousand. Ten thousand. Five thousand. Three thousand-now! She clicked a button and jolted back as a thick metal rod, with four large flaps on top, burst from her pod and slowed her descent to a survivable speed. Below her was the town of Coira, one of the largest population centers on the frontier world. Beyond that lay a great taiga, and a mountain range further to the west. She could see the legions of alien troops swarming the streets of the town, and the valiant humans struggling to defeat them. Amazingly, she survived the drop and crashed down in a meter-deep pond half a kilometer from the outskirts of town. After she had pulled down on a lever to pop the door open, she gathered her gear and took a few tentative steps outside. She could make out the sound of gunfire even here, but quickly did a communications check to see if her team was okay before proceeding.

"Jennifer here," she said sternly, with one finger pressed to her helmet's comm. "Is everyone alright?"

Static interrupted the responses for a while, but she received five messages confirming that her entire team had indeed survived the drop. She then listened intently as her Second Lieutenant gave orders.

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen," the gruff, Reach-born Sergei Tarkov ordered. "Our primary objective is to help civilians escape, so we'll go in and link up with the UNSC forces on the ground. I noticed some Wraiths in the residential district, so those need to be taken care of, but I'm not sure where our heavy weapons landed."

"I see 'em, sir," another ODST, Jackson DeWitt, replied. "The pod they came down in is just a couple meters away." As her squadmates talked amongst themselves, Jennifer Rosche strode out of the lake and moved towards the sound of gunfire.

"Well, who here landed in the actual city besides myself?" Tarkov inquired. He was met with silence. "Okay then, I'll find local forces, and the rest of you try to meet up before heading into Coira." Five voices acknowledged his order and immediately began discussing where to regroup. Rosche partook in the conversation for some time until she saw something moving in the trees. Switching her comm off, she took cover behind a particularly thick trunk and watched in shock as something materialized nearby.

It was a Sangheili; an Elite, as humans called them, which turned off its active camouflage and began warbling in an alien language into a wrist-mounted communication device mere meters in front of her. Rosche had no idea why the eight-foot-tall reptilian would be away from the battle, and didn't care to find out. Wordlessly, she unclipped a frag grenade from her belt, took the safety pin out and tossed it towards the Elite. She was in luck; the grenade settled in the mud inches from the alien's foot. Noticing the slight smoke trail it had left, the Elite turned in the direction from where the grenade had been thrown and took out a blue plasma repeater. It managed to get off a handful of shots before the grenade exploded at its feet, sending shrapnel and dirt into the air. To Rosche's chagrin, the creature's blue shields held strong against the blast. Internally cursing her stupidity, she recognized that the Elite was designated as an Ultra-class soldier; it commanded leadership positions and had exceptionally tough shields and armor.

The Ultra turned towards her and removed a weapon from its back: a curved, bronze concussion rifle. Rosche had seen this weapon in action before, and felt uneasy. It fired pink slugs of plasma that were relatively weak and slow, but a direct hit could wound her gravely. The Elite fired towards the trunk she was behind, and she scrambled away, aiming her assault rifle at the creature and riddling its shield with bullets. A series of concussion blasts impacted behind her, and she kept moving in fear of getting hit. Enraged at the ineffectiveness of its weapon, the white-armored alien plucked a blue sphere from a holster on its waist and threw it towards the ODST. Rosche grunted as she leapt from behind a tree and landed face-down in the dirt. The sphere, a deadly plasma grenade, blew the lower half of the tree apart, sending splinters everywhere. As Rosche scrambled to get up, she felt a searing pain in her back, and she was catapulted into the tangle of branches that had been the canopy of the tree. The Elite had shot her with its rifle, and it moved in for the kill.

As it drew close, Rosche turned around suddenly and unleashed a barrage of bullets from her SMG. Her opponent was momentarily stunned, but viciously kicked her in the chin before she could get up. Her weapon went flying into the bushes behind her, and her helmet was knocked off, revealing the face of a woman with short, curly brown hair and bright blue eyes. She shook her head weakly and saw the blood that was dripping from her chin. Rosche braced herself for death, and once more her thoughts strayed to her deceased family.

But the next thing she heard was an alien screech, and the next thing she felt was the Elite's corpse falling on top of her. With a groan, she looked up at her saviors.

Two members of her squad, Corporal Monique Washington and Master Sergeant Oscar Cortez, were gazing down at her. Washington bent down to retrieve her combat knife, which she had expertly thrown to impale the Elite's neck, albeit from only a meter away. While the alien's shields had deflected Rosche's bullets, they were practically powerless against a blade, and Washington was an expert knife thrower. Cortez offered Rosche his hand and hauled her up. "You've seen better days," he remarked. Rosche laughed sharply, and went to retrieve her weapons.

"Anyone got a medkit?" she asked as she attached her SMG to her belt. Both of her teammates shook their heads. "Of course..." she muttered, picking up her helmet and gazing at its emerald stripe. Hers was not the only armor among Omega Two-Seven, her team, which was decorated. Washington had yellow stripes on her helmet and shoulder pauldrons, while DeWitt had red ones, Tarkov had orange ones, Cortez had white ones and the lowest-ranking soldier, PFC David Cross, had blue stripes.

"Do you know where Jack or David are?" Rosche asked.

"Do you?" Washington replied sarcastically. "We can worry about that later; right now, we need to get you patched up."

"I'll go see if I can destroy those Wraiths the LT was talking about," Cortez said, shouldering his battle rifle. "Wash, get Rosche into the city."

"Aye, sir." Washington sheathed her knife and led her wounded companion towards the sounds of battle. The two women crossed a stream and, within minutes, saw a major highway. It was devoid of living Covenant, but the dead bodies of the aliens and those of the citizens and defenders of Coira littered the road. Elites, Jackals, Grunts, Hunters...the two ODSTs even spied some Brute corpses, which struck them as odd considering the Elites and Brutes seemed to hold immense dislike for each other.

Rosche let out a short gasp whenever she saw the bodies of children, usually slaughtered with their parents. Washington comforted her, and reminded her that she needed medical aid, so they both hurried along. As they rounded the corner of a nearby store, Washington heard a shout and turned to see two orange-suited Grunts holding plasma pistols barely twenty feet away. The plucky aliens fired at the ODSTs, but were swiftly cut down as Washington advanced with a shotgun and Rosche caved in their wrinkly heads with her SMG's bullets. The two stocky aliens fell to the ground, bleeding turquoise blood from gaping wounds all across their bodies. The women stared around at the ruined, burning buildings, looking for any other signs of life, but saw none.

"C'mon," Washington said, taking off her helmet and wiping her dark forehead. "You can still hear the gunfire, can't you?" Her companion nodded weakly. "That's where the spaceport is. That's where we need to go." After putting her helmet back on, she jogged down the street, looked behind her towards Rosche, and screamed, fist proudly in the air, "To war!"

The other woman wiped blood off her chin, rolled her eyes and sarcastically parodied the gung-ho saying.

"To war, _my_ ass." _  
_

 **xxx**

"I'm going to put it bluntly, Marine: we are in all kinds of trouble down here," the grim-faced Army soldier was saying. He smoothed back his blonde hair and rapped his fingers on the back of his neck. Lieutenant Sergei Tarkov stood in front of him in the ramshackle headquarters the Army and Marines had established. Formed in what had been an airport, they were busy helping Coira's four hundred thousand inhabitants escape the town. A barrage of Covenant Wraith fire made evacuation nigh-on-impossible, so the Army soldier, Major Trevor Goodwin, who was in charge of the regiment of soldiers spearheading the evacuation, viewed his position as unenviable. "We simply can't get everyone off the planet," he explained sadly. All around the two men, Marines and the planet's garrison of Army troops were mingling with the citizens and trying to keep them calm. A logistical team was coordinating efforts to keep the Covenant ground troops away from the airport.

"Sir, we've got reports of a squadron of Banshees inbound from the southeast!" one man shouted. Goodwin rushed over to the computer terminal he was monitoring, which was feeding info from various teams of soldiers deployed throughout the city. True enough, the helmet camera from one Marine showed at least a dozen of the Covenant's purple fighter craft screaming through the air towards the town's skyline.

Goodwin shook his head in rage when he saw the video feed. "Are our Wolverines still active?" Tarkov walked up behind him, as did a handful of other military personnel, as they waited for the reply.

"We have...one active M9 MAAT, sir."

Goodwin breathed a sigh of relief. "That's better than nothing. Get it to Aider Park, ASAP! We can mount an offensive from there." As the techie returned to his work, Goodwin resumed his talk with Tarkov. "I was trying to get some troopers to take the Wraiths out, but this town is absolutely crawling with the alien bastards."

"Ah! Not to worry about the Wraiths, barátom. My squad should be taking care of them as we speak."

Goodwin stared at him, confused. It took Tarkov but a moment to understand why.

"Barátom means 'my friend' in Hungarian. I-I'm from Reach."

The Senior Major nodded. "Yeah, sorry about that. I was born on Harvest-lots of American influences there, so most people just spoke English."

This piqued Tarkov's interest. "Were you on Harvest when...?"

"I was fourteen when Harvest was attacked." The sounds of distant explosions and the closer noises of crying children and worried adults made for a strange time to talk about one's childhood, but Tarkov listened out of respect. "My family was lucky enough to get offworld, but I remember how terrible it was, especially after we escaped. We spent weeks in space, drifting towards Madrigal..." He shuddered and looked out the window. "That's all behind me, though. Right now, all I'm worried about is getting these people off this rock safely." He gazed around at the hundreds of innocents milling about the terminal. Suddenly, there was a booming noise and everyone started to panic again. Goodwin looked out one of the immense glass windows and saw a Banshee looping over the building. As it flew in for another attack, an explosion engulfed it, courtesy of a team of Army soldiers manning missile pods near the spaceport's entrance.

"Dammit..." Goodwin muttered. "We don't have much time at all..."

 **xxx**

The two soldiers were silent as the proverbial grave, and determined to fill said grave to the brim with Covenant bodies. David 'Boomer' Cross and Jackson 'Jack' DeWitt snuck in behind enemy lines and took down any alien they saw. They now found themselves in a predicament: their objective was to destroy the Wraith tanks that were scattered throughout the city, but they needed to avoid getting slaughtered in the act. Moving cautiously, the duo snuck closer to where they had seen the blue enemy tanks. Cross had a rocket launcher strapped to his back; DeWitt had the energy weapon known as the Spartan Laser. As they ducked behind the cover of a toppled building, a familiar whirring noise followed by a soft explosion made them realize how close they were to their targets.

"Boomer, can you see over there? By the supermarket...it's a Ghost." DeWitt pointed out the agile, violet vehicle the Covenant used as scouting devices. Piloted by a single soldier, the twin plasma cannons could tear the ODSTs to shreds if they weren't careful. Unfortunately, they saw as they crept closer that the Ghost's pilot, a Grunt, wasn't alone: a team of four of its fellow methane-sucking buddies, accompanied by a duo of fearsome Elites and an avian Jackal, were busy installing a sniper's nest, which hovered a dozen feet off the ground on a blue antigravity beam. The troopers could hear Wraiths very close by, but this lance of soldiers was in their way, and taking them down would undoubtedly reveal their position.

"C'mon, there has to be a way around these guys," Cross whispered urgently. "I ain't wasting rockets on them when there are Wraiths just a block away."

"Are you kidding? If we kill even one of those freaks than we'd save a bunch of human lives!" DeWitt started to stand up and aim his laser, but his younger companion pulled him down.

"Are you out of your mind? At least one of those split-jaws has a beam rifle. They'd pick you off before you could fire a single-" Cross stopped what he'd been saying and lay prone. DeWitt looked to where he had been gazing at and saw the Ghost hover noisily down the street towards them. He took out his silenced magnum as the vehicle sped closer and, standing fully upright, killed the driver with a round through its eye socket. He then clambered over the wreck of the building and ran to where the Ghost lay. He fired the purple vehicle up-its own antigravity lift caused it to hover about two feet off the ground once a driver sat down in it-and turned it around, slowing down only to fire at the Covenant soldiers. His fellow ODST clambered over the building and provided covering fire with his designated marksman rifle, killing the Jackal and a Grunt with precise headshots. DeWitt, meanwhile, was mowing down Elites and Grunts with the Ghost, until one of them stuck the craft with a pulsating blue plasma grenade. The ODST launched himself out of the vehicle moments before its front half exploded. However, there was still one very angry Elite alive, who was more than happy to fire at DeWitt with a deadly beam rifle. Luckily for the human, that type of rifle was made for long range combat, and he was directly underneath the platform the Elite was on. DeWitt jumped into the lift and gently floated up to the Elite, who had taken out a plasma pistol. It fired at him, hitting him in the chest, but was distracted when rounds from Cross's gun impacted its shields from behind. DeWitt leapt at the taller, stronger, gold-armored alien, pinning its right arm to the ground and keeping its body on the platform using his entire weight. The alien struggled to free itself, but the human shoved his pistol past the creature's mandibles and into its throat, which he unloaded eight rounds into.

His chest armor had been torn into, and his skin was slightly burned by the plasma, but that wasn't what DeWitt was worried about. After reloading, he looked down at Cross. "Those Wraiths are gonna come any second now."

"No thanks to me!" Cross smirked as he rushed past his comrade, who jumped down from the platform and fell face-first due to the laser on his back weighing him down. Cross chuckled and helped him up.

Despite DeWitt's warning, the Wraiths were busy. There were three of the cerulean tanks, parked at what had indeed been a parking lot. At the moment, it appeared like they were receiving orders, as Elite drivers, along with, surprisingly, some Brutes, were being given instructions by blue, shimmering holograms, displayed above a pedestal, of a Brute Chieftain and an Elite Shipmaster.

Around the Wraiths lay the smoldering remains of a group of humans; by the looks of it, none of them had stood a chance. DeWitt stifled a cry of anger, and Cross simply grimaced.

"On three, we take these sons of bitches down," DeWitt ordered. His companion nodded. "One...two...three!" The two ODSTs sprinted away from the building they'd been behind, aimed across a battle-scarred street at the Wraiths and unloaded their ammo at the alien tanks. The pedestal the holograms had been projected from was destroyed, and two Brutes were torn to pieces from Cross's rockets. A Wraith was obliterated by the beam of the Spartan Laser. As the other trooper reloaded, DeWitt blew a second Wraith apart with another blood-red energy blast. The alien soldiers attempted to retaliate, running towards the humans and firing their weapons, and one Elite hopped into the remaining Wraith and launched a glob of plasma towards the ODSTs. The humans scrambled to get away before the area they had been standing at was turned to molten glass in an instant. They ducked behind an abandoned car, and Cross fired two more rockets at the Wraith, while DeWitt attacked the advancing infantry with short bursts from his assault rifle.

"You do realize," DeWitt said as plasma bolts burned holes into the chassis of the car, "that these aren't the only Wraiths in the town?"

"Can't hurt to destroy 'em!" Cross yelled back. As they fired at the troops, they heard a sound of rattling, and within moments a UNSC Warthog drove into view, and its gunner cut down the Covenant besieging them. Trailing behind the damaged vehicle were a small group of Marines, and one Army soldier.

The ODSTs revealed themselves and took off their helmets, and DeWitt placed a hand on his fellow Helljumper's shoulder. "Good job, Boomer. Once again, more fine demolitions work."

The gunner of the Warthog jumped off and strode over to Cross and DeWitt. She had short red hair in a tight bun and inquisitive blue eyes, which were firmly rested on the older trooper. She whistled. "Damn, battle really brings out the fire in your eyes, soldier."

"Sorry, ma'am," DeWitt responded with a shrug. "I'm married. But he isn't!" he said with a dash of humor, pointing to Cross.

The Marine laughed. "He can't be older than...twenty-four? Too young for me. Sorry, trooper," she said sarcastically, pinching Cross's cheek. The ODST blushed, although his dark complexion hid his embarrassment. "Anyways, Major Goodwin-he's in charge of the garrison here-has ordered for the civilians to be evacuated immediately," the woman said.

"Y'know, there are still Wraiths and Banshees and..."

"Yes, hotstuff, I know," she said, cutting DeWitt off. "But the Covenant seems to be winning the battle in space; word is all the UNSC ships in orbit have either been destroyed or they've retreated. If we don't get them off Endymion now, we might never get the opportunity." The other humans were talking amongst each other sorrowfully, and Cross walked towards them as DeWitt resumed talking to the Marine. They told him that they had recently lost some close comrades in battle, and he shared his condolences. The survivors were also calling in a Pelican for a ride back to the airport.

The humans went into the supermarket, and were disgusted to find even more bodies: mostly human, but mixed with a few alien cadavers. Some soldiers wanted to eat the various food that had been on sale, but their commanding officer forbade them to. The one surviving Army soldier, seeing a loophole, began to gorge himself on sour candy. When he was called out for his actions, he said that, as he wasn't actually a Marine, he didn't technically have to follow their orders.

The ODSTs found out his name was Isamu Ban, and quickly became friends with him. DeWitt found talking to him more relaxing than talking to the Marine sergeant. "Just because I don't wear my wedding ring in combat doesn't mean she should think she can steal me from my wife!" he complained.

The redheaded Marine in question, who had been eyeing the three, rolled her eyes and looked cautiously out the doors for a Pelican. One of the dark green UNSC dropships was visible, and approaching rapidly. The Marine rallied her subordinates and gave Ban a stern look when he tried to bring some beer onboard. Ban, for his part, tossed the bottle away before he could drink it.

After they had settled onboard the Pelican, the pilot began to lift the ship off the street. Through the tiny bay window, the passengers could see the beginnings of a majestic, albeit presumably ill-fated, civilian fleet flee from the spaceport. The spacecraft ranged from carrying fifty passengers to five hundred, but they all had the same destination: anywhere but Endymion. Some ships were targeted and destroyed by Wraiths or Banshees, but most of them seemed like they might just make it.

Without warning, the voice of the Pelican's copilot came on the intercom so that the men and women in the back could hear him. "Umm...ladies and gentlemen, we have a new destination. We've gotten word that any remaining UNSC ships have left the system...radar indicates that at least one Covenant cruiser is moving towards Coira and we fear it will glass the town. As such, we're leaving."

Cries of shock and protest erupted in the cabin.

"My squad is still down there!"

"We're not going back to help?"

"Pipe down, all of you!" the redheaded Marine officer yelled. "If we go to Coira, we'll die, without a doubt." She bit her lip and sighed heavily as a melancholy silence fell upon the Pelican's passengers. They came to grip with the fact that, despite fighting and dying to save men and women they knew nothing about, they were utterly helpless to save the ones who they viewed as family.

The dropship headed in the opposite direction and joined the civilian ships in the exodus of the town. Behind them, a massive Covenant cruiser pierced the clouds and headed towards Coira, its energy projector already glowing crimson in preparation for the imminent cessation of thousands of human lives.


	2. Ruination

**Hello, everyone! I'm back with chapter 2. Thanks to the people who followed and reviewed my story, along with the viewers who took the time to read it. I hope you like this next chapter.**

Once the word had been given, the civilians ran like lemmings to any ship they could find. Each spacecraft carried many more people than they could fit, so many were weighed down and proved to be easy pickings for circling Banshees or anti-air Wraiths still on the ground. A wave of Seraphs had even shot some out of the sky, resulting in hundreds of casualties. Trevor Goodwin watched in horror as a plethora of ships were destroyed, and breathed a sigh of relief whenever one vanished into the clouds; at least the people onboard those craft might escape this doomed world. Most likely, they'd be slaughtered by the small Covenant fleet above the planet, but if even one person evacuated successfully, he'd feel proud. What a shame, he thought, that he probably wouldn't live long enough to ever find out.

Shaking his head, Goodwin watched his staff, still at their monitors and terminals, overseeing the exodus. They were communicating with the pilots of the transports, telling them where to fly, where to avoid flying, and listening solemnly whenever the dying cries of unlucky pilots echoed through their headsets. The man looking over a radar turned to Goodwin, with sweat enveloping his brow and dark spots under his eyes. "Sir?" he said, crestfallen. "There's a Covenant cruiser inbound."

Goodwin didn't bother checking; he just squeezed his face with his hand and let out a slight sob. "Then leave, dammit. All of you!" he called out to the troops within earshot. "Go! Run! As long as there are still Covenant in the city we have time to escape!" Wasting no time, most of the soldiers bounded towards the elevators that led to the small contingent of Warthog and Mongoose vehicles stationed at the airport, or down the escalators and staircases in an effort to scavenge vehicles for their own. Meanwhile, the last transport was leaving the massive spaceport, which was littered with the ruins of those which hadn't made it. In any direction for at least a mile from the area, wrecked ships lay, on the street or crashed into buildings, victims of a relentless Covenant attack. Now that the cruiser was inbound to reduce Coira to ashes, however, the Covenant ground forces had every reason to retreat as the UNSC. Goodwin waited for everyone to leave, and even had to force some foolhardy loyal soldiers into evacuating before he abandoned the town.

It was eerie, walking through the airport and seeing nobody. The soldiers and civilians had all left; of course, he'd given them a multitude of rendezvous points in case they didn't find offworld transport elsewhere. Goodwin whistled to himself as he strode out one of the doors and looked up at the bleak, grey sky. He checked the watch he kept in his pocket for no discernible reason and meandered calmly down the highway and away from the town. Behind him, many miles away, the Covenant spaceship unleashed a beam of red fire directly onto one of the more industrialized sectors of Coira. It fired for a few seconds, and a swath of land the size of a football field was instantly vaporized. Goodwin watched with an expressionless face before turning around and marching towards the forest.

He had seen it all before. This was, after all, his fifth glassing.

 **xxx**

Jennifer Rosche and Monique Washington never made it to the spaceport. They'd run into a pair of emerald-armored, twelve-foot-tall Hunters, who had attempted to kill them, but the two women had escaped and used a plasma launcher scavenged off a dead Brute to blow the aliens apart. Washington had been disgusted to learn that they were made up of thousands of small worm-like creatures, and Rosche launched into a tirade about the Lekgolo, which her teammate had largely ignored. "Honestly, Monique, I can't believe you didn't know that. You've fought Hunters before-I've seen you do it." Washington continued to not listen as she ambled her way through yet another ruined shop, pausing only to shake her head sorrowfully at the corpse of a young clerk behind the counter. As the duo walked down a sidewalk, they spied some figures in the distance. Drawing closer, they realized that the figures were humans. "Hey! Over here!"

Hearing this cry, a group of civilians rushed over to the ODSTs. "Thank God," one man said. "ODSTs. We're saved!" The man had coffee-colored skin, a bald head and a maroon shirt on. Behind him stood an elderly Oriental woman and a slim redheaded youth who needed a shave and a tissue. "I missed the crowds...heh, I thought it would be better to wait..."

"You're the first people we've seen in an hour," the woman said sadly. "Almost everyone who could went to the spaceport. Most of the rest of us have been killed."

The teenager wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "Like my dad..." he said grimly. "We're all going to die, aren't we?" Rosche opened her mouth to give him some solace, but Washington butted in immediately.

"Probably. The Covies fought hard for this city. Intel said it was ground zero for their first attacks." The ashen faces of the innocent people in front of her confirmed this. The shock of the day-long assault had worn off and they were now focused solely on survival. The young man started to cry.

Rosche glared daggers at her teammate, although she couldn't see it through the polarized visor of her ODST helmet. "Let's all just try to get to the spaceport, okay? Without dying." Washington hefted her rifle and nodded, gesturing for the civilians to start marching. They wandered in silence, save for the strained breathing of the elderly woman and the sniffles from the teenager, for a few minutes, avoiding any roving Banshees or Covenant soldiers they saw. As they were marching on, darting between collapsed buildings and steadily heading to the edge of the town where the spaceport was, they began to hear a loud, droning buzz. Jennifer gasped as she noticed the first transport rise up from the spaceport and begin lifting towards the clouds, and gasped even louder a moment later when a squadron of Banshees converged on it and obliterated its engines, causing a reaction that tore apart half the ship.

"Oh my God," she stated. "There must've been three hundred people in there."

A similar fate was in store for the next few ships that tried to leave. Wraiths on the ground blew massive holes into their hulls, causing the passengers that weren't vaporized instantly to fall through the air to their deaths. Anti-air Wraiths, with their deadly, pinpoint green plasma barrages, caused a multitude of ships to plummet out of the air. Mesmerized by the destruction above them, they failed to notice the ominous, two-kilometer-long alien spaceship hover in past the clouds and towards the city until it was almost too late. "That's a Covenant ship!" the bald man cried. He'd obviously never seen one before, and his hands started to twitch. "It's gonna glass us!" The teenager broke down in tears, and the elderly women sputtered. The ODSTs, however, stood resolute and, spying a nearby car that wasn't too damaged, checked to see if it still worked. Although it was missing a door and headlights, it was in operational condition.

"Over here!" Washington called. "We found a car. The problem is that it can only seat four. That's why I'm staying behind." Rosche gulped. How could she let her friend just give up like that?

"No," the old woman sighed suddenly with a shake of her frail head, "no, you're not. How old are you, missy? Thirty?"

"Yes, ma'am," Washington said nervously.

The old woman smiled. "Then I'm over three times your age. You still have your whole life ahead of you; I have a decade, tops." She pointed to the silver automobile. "You get in that car and save the world, young lady." Washington saluted her and moved closer to give her a handshake. The woman smiled and watched as the two ODSTs and the two men got into the car and, after a few tries to start it, drove off.

Half a minute later, a troop-transport Warthog zipped past, carrying five Army soldiers. They paid her no attention and drove as fast as their vehicle could handle. Practically flying over the worn and broken highway, they were nearing the edge of town when the Covenant ship began to glass the town. These five barely managed to escape, but so many others did not. The bodies of the dead, the dying and the lost and unlucky were all turned to molten slag. While not every building was decimated, Coira was rendered uninhabitable. After half an hour, not a single living soul was left to roam its once-teeming streets.

 **xxx**

David Cross was equally shocked and relieved to discover that someone on the Pelican he was riding on was related to him. One of the Marines, a man named Gordon Turay, who looked similar to Cross, but had a faint mustache and a prominent scar on his forehead, was one of his second cousins. The two men were even from the same planet, Tbilisi, although they came from different continents. The men had discovered their familiar kinship through the conversation that occurred as the pilots of the Pelican looked for a city that wasn't utterly devastated by the Covenant. Isamu Ban, the Army soldier, had stated that he knew of an entire platoon of soldiers killed by a glassing beam, whereas Cross had stated that death by glassing was such a mundane way to be killed by the Covenant, something Jackson DeWitt had expressed profound distaste for, although he wouldn't say why. Cross had told the tale of how his cousin had been killed after being crushed to death by a Covenant orbital insertion pod that had been launched by an enemy corvette during the fall of Sargasso in 2546. As it turned out, Turay's cousin had died in the same manner at the same time, and they deduced that their deceased cousins were one and the same.

In a way, it was comforting knowing that he could relate to someone of the Pelican. There were only eight of them, plus the two pilots in the cockpit; Cross thought to himself, with a pang of sadness, that these might be the only people he ever saw again, if he and the others didn't find transport off of Endymion. After he and Turay had acquainted themselves with each other, his second cousin had introduced him to his Marine contingent. The redheaded woman who had tried to hit on DeWitt was Gunnery Sergeant Valerie Schumacher. The other survivors of his squad included Thomas Gerencer, a proud and vivacious sergeant from Circumstance, Mary Hong, a normally calm soldier who, like Cross, held serious concerns about the chances they'd ever get offworld, and finally 'little' Abigail Crawford, a medical specialist who was currently patching up DeWitt's wounded chest. Using little to describe her was both apt and ironic; while she was only nineteen years old, she was six foot one, making her nearly a head taller than any other woman there, and even taller than Isamu Ban. "You can put your armor back on now, sir," she said as she put her depleting canister of biofoam into a utility medkit.

DeWitt grunted and grabbed at his burnt chest, hauling himself into a sitting position. "Thank you, private," he stated. For her part, Crawford nodded politely and sat back down. Now that the conversation had quieted down, the only sound was the steady rhythm of the Pelican's engines as it skimmed over the treetops. Although the pilots had assured that they did know where the settlements of Endymion were located, their passengers doubted it.

After just under two hours of uneventful flight, pilot Rosanna Moreno picked up a short and unintelligible signal on her short-way radio, which prompted her to ask her copilot and gunner Conway Aberwitz if he recognized the transmission, which he did not. A sudden flurry of activity in the back, however, caused Aberwitz to get on the comms and ask what the fuss was about. Moments later, an excited ODST with blue decals told the two to land the 'bird' so they could pick up a passenger. Finding a meadow, the pilots set the Pelican down, leaving it hovering a foot above the ochre grass. They opened the bay door, and Cross led Schumacher and Gerencer out of the vehicle in case this turned out to be a trap. Though the sun had yet to set, looming trees dappled the sunlight and a light fog only worsened visibility. Cross was lucky enough to have VISR capability in his helmet; with the click of a tiny button on the side of his helmet, the environment brightened for him, and the outlines of the trees and shrubs became highlighted in yellow. The Marines next to him became outlined in green, as the VISR recognized them as friendly forces.

Cross didn't have to wait long before a moving figure became apparent in the woods. Running swiftly, it bounded into the meadow and ran towards the ODST, stopping just short of him before placing his hands on his knees and doubling over with a shortness of breath. Cross found himself shockingly reunited with his squadmate Oscar Cortez. "Cortez! Man, you don't look too good. What the hell happened?"

"I have had...the worst day..." Cortez breathed. "They took McClellan...they slaughtered Onora..." He lurched forward, and Cross barely caught him. Schumacher rushed over and they got Cortez inside the Pelican, where he fell to the ground. DeWitt, whose legs were now pinned under his hysterical comrade, gave out a cry.

"Is that...Cortez? Where's Wash, or Tarkov, or Rosche?"

"I..." Cortez took off his helmet and sputtered while Gerencer informed the pilots to take off. "I don't know. I went searching...for you two, actually." He let out a raspy cough, and Crawford rushed to his side to see if he was hurt. Cortez held up his hand, motioning for her to wait. "I came across a couple survivors from the city. It was then that I learned that the Covenant ships were breaking through the UNSC line. Coira was...a lost cause." He closed his eyes and ran a hand through his thick brown hair. When he opened his eyes, they were full of fear. "A pack of Brutes found us. We were listening to them for a while...they found this world by accident, apparently. Retreating, from the ass-kicking we gave them at Cavern. Heh...funny, right?"

Schumacher cut into his diatribe. "We don't need to know why they're on Endymion, soldier. We just want to know whether or not we're being followed. What happened with those Brutes?" she asked impatiently.

"A Drone saw us and a bunch of them took away McClellan-they just lifted him up into the air, towards their Phantom. Onora and I made a run for it, through the forest, but they ambushed us. The last I saw of her, a Skirmisher-you know, those really agile Jackals?-had tackled her and and a whole bunch of them were just...tearing her to shreds..." He gulped, then continued. "I never saw any Brutes go after us, but I shot down a ton of Drones and a even few Skirmishers. Hell...I only escaped by jumping into a damn lake! They must've thought I drowned."

The soldiers fidgeted nervously. They were all aware of the vicious nature of the Covenant, and of Brutes especially. To hear the things Cortez had to go through to escape sent shivers down their spines. Crawford began to sweat profusely, and wiped her forehead with a gloved hand. Gerencer cleared his throat before pulling out an MRE. He opened it up and began to nibble on a protein bar. Seeing him eat, Cortez felt peckish himself and ate one of his own packaged meals. Soon afterwards, every soldier was solemnly munching their own tasteless bars.

After finishing what hardly constituted as a meal, the weary soldiers began to settle down. By the time Moreno and Aberwitz had set the Pelican down in a small valley, almost all of them were asleep. The two pilots ordered Hong, who was still awake, to keep watch, which she did so calmly from the back of the Pelican, staring outside the dropship's small window for only twenty minutes before letting sleep overtake her. She neglected to wake anyone else up to watch for Covenant interlopers stalking the cliffs, but she was fortunate enough that their craft had avoided the notice of the aliens. Endymion had two moons, but both of them were quite small, so they produced only an ample amount of light. With all its electronics powered off, the dropship was undetectable except when tiny slivers of moonlight reflected off the metallic exterior.

The war gave them one night of reprieve. In the morning, promptly after Moreno awoke and shook her copilot awake, they set off again. "Where exactly are we headed?" Schumacher demanded, after several minutes, of the pilots. She had yet to hear either of them announce their heading, except the vague sense of 'away'.

"We received a set of coordinates, from command. Certain towns or other areas suitable for staging areas." Moreno paused a moment, and Schumacher assumed she would continue. However, the Pelican lurched suddenly to starboard, and descended rapidly. The bay door lowered, and the UNSC personnel could see a vast prairie behind them, dotted with lakes, and herds of the terrestrial creatures of Endymion grazing or drinking to their heart's content. Gigantic mountains surrounded them on all sides, and the valley they'd spent the night in was far out of sight. With the sunny sky above them, it looked like a scene from a nature documentary, with one major exception: far away, numerous patches of sky were dark grey, and smoke and flame rose from the ground. Flashes of what appeared to be lightning were really bolts of plasma streaking down to decimate the planet. The troops tried not to focus on the destruction and instead on what had caused the sudden descent.

"Why are we landing?" DeWitt yelled up front. He found out by looking out the window just as Aberwitz responded:

"There's a crashed frigate down here, man! Think of all the supplies!"

True enough, the wreckage of a Paris-class frigate lay abandoned on the prairie. The aft and bow sections had been split apart, and the former was somewhat submerged in a small lake. One of the engines was missing, and blast marks were visible on all sides. Debris was lying all across the prairie, in hand-sized or room-sized pieces. The three ODSTs onboard the Pelican were shocked, as they saw the name of the ship, to see that it was the _Avenger_. Their shock turned to nervous apprehension when the Pelican landed.

"Alright," Schumacher said as she stood up, "we're going to salvage any supplies we can from that ship. Hong, Gerencer, Cross, Turay and Ban. You're with me. It's doubtful we'll find any Covenant in there, but they might be on our trail." The woman stretched and hoisted an assault rifle across her shoulders. "The rest of you, stay here and protect this bird. If you see anything that looks hostile and inhuman, shoot it till it stops breathing." She ushered her search party out of the Pelican, but felt a hand gripping her arm.

Turning, she saw it was DeWitt. "Keep 'em safe, and come back alive," he said adamantly, a warm smile spreading across his face. She smiled back and followed her party out of the ship. Crawford watched them leave and waved. She frowned when nobody returned it.

"What's the matter, kid?" Cortez asked. Crawford froze, her face a mask of embarrassment.

"Nothing, Master Sergeant, sir," she replied. "Everything's peachy."

 **xxx**

"Peaches, too? Man, if I'd known the Navy had this kind of food, I'd have enlisted there!"

"But it's not, y'know, the most high-quality stuff, Ban."

"So?" the soldier replied as he dispensed the dried fruit into an overstuffed knapsack. "We don't get this stuff readily in the Army!" Hong rolled her eyes and went back to scavenging the mess hall. She felt safe there, but was still uneasy. Although a Covenant attack seemed unlikely, it was equally eerie wandering around a knowingly empty ship, especially one without power, then one with potential enemies onboard. She shuddered as a cool breeze blew in from one of the innumerable chunks taken out of the frigate, and shot an impatient look at Ban. The younger soldier didn't see her, and he'd started on pillaging the contents of yet another vending machine. Hong sighed and opened a communications channel to one if her fellow Marines.

"Thomas? How are things looking, ammo-wise?" she inquired.

"Better than I would've thought," came the scratchy reply from Tom Gerencer. "We've found plenty of bullets and weapons-we even found a functioning Warthog!"

Hong's brow furrowed. "Why the hell would we need a Warthog?" she snapped. "So it can leave tracks and leads the enemy right to us?"

"How else are we going to get all this stuff to the dropship?" Turay argued from across the room. He was carrying a few canteens of water was busy filling up another one from a drinking fountain. "It's too much for us to carry. Besides," he continued as he screwed shut the canteen, "after this, we still have to raid the medical bay. That's even more crap to carry, and I for one am not lugging it all by hand."

Hong thought about Turay's argument and concluded that he was right. The most suitable use for the Warthog would be for only temporary transport of the supplies. "You're...you're right, Gordon. I apologize." Her comrade smirked and went off searching for a crate to put all the food in. Hong, meanwhile, wandered off in search of the ship's medical bay. She wasn't certain what Crawford would need in case of any further injuries, but she was hoping any find would prove useful.

As a Marine, she'd served on quite a few frigates, and was familiar with the general layout of the ship. Luckily, the medical bay was located in the bow section her group had been tasked with exploring. The only thing in it that startled her was a small native lizard; the tan-colored reptile hissed at her from its position on the medbay floor and scurried past her into the hallway. After composing herself from the mild shock of seeing a non-human living thing onboard, Hong rummaged through drawers and picked clean tables of any pills, biofoam or any other medicine that might come in handy. After placing these on one of the surgical tables, her eyes darted across the room, searching for something to put them all in. With the utterance of an expletive, she realized just how crucial storage was going to be for the supplies. Would the Pelican even be able to handle the extra weight? She pushed this doubt to the back of her mind: one of the metal birds could carry over thirty tons of equipment, and finding a place to store them on the dropship would be the biggest problem.

It wouldn't be for long.

While Cross and Gerencer loaded a crate of the most practical weapons they found onto the Warthog, Schumacher had gone exploring. She had originally only left to see if the ship's restrooms were still intact, which they luckily were, but soon found herself eager to discover more about the derelict _Avenger_. The few corpses she found were of those killed in the crash; most of the dead bodies had been sucked into space or burnt in the atmosphere. One man had had his windpipe crushed by an actual pipe; a woman had been impaled by shards of glass from a broken window. She made her way around the ship, collecting dog tags and wondering if anyone was still alive onboard. It was an admittedly morbid task, but she didn't complain. Valerie Schumacher had seen her fair share of dead bodies, and most were more gruesome to behold than the handful she encountered on the wrecked ship.

In the end, it wasn't the bodies that spooked her. It was the disembodied voice. As soon as she walked onto the bridge, she heard it plainly: an irritable male voice that asked, "Who the hell are you?" Schumacher gasped in fear and turned to run out the door, but the voice urged her not to. "Don't! Wait! I'm an AI!" Spinning around, she saw a shimmering emerald form appear on a stand next to a broken computer monitor. It took the form of a young man in an aviator's jacket wearing a pair of old-fashioned headphones, with slick dark hair. "UNSC AI YSN 2883-8. They call me Yossarian." The AI paused a moment and somberly regarded the situation his ship was in. "Called me, I should say."

"Like...like Catch-22," Schumacher responded.

"Thank you!" the figure said in a snarky tone. "At least someone's read the book." He regarded the woman in front of him for barely a fraction of a second. "You must be Gunnery Sergeant Valerie Rosalind Schumacher, serial number 25599-11147-VS. Age: 30. Birthplace: Mirenstein, on Candor. Birthdate:"

"Stop! Good Lord, I forgot how annoying AI could be!" the sergeant roared. The artificial intelligence in question snickered.

"Tell me, Gunny," the AI stated, "have the Covenant overrun the planet yet?"

"Not yet. You guys gave them a beating up in space, and they don't have the manpower-alienpower?-to glass the planet en masse."

The green figure rubbed his holographic chin. "Are you here to gather supplies, or perhaps make a bunker to weather out the coming fire?"

"The former...why do you ask?"

"Because either option is futile," the AI retorted. "More Covenant ships will come. I don't know how many humans are still on Endymion, but they won't be escaping any time soon. Not unless, of course, I intervene."

"What do you mean?" Schumacher wondered aloud.

"The UNSC has given up on this meager world," Yossarian replied, clasping his arms behind his back and pacing about his pedestal. "There's nothing left here for them to salvage...except me." He stood still and gazed sternly at Schumacher. When she failed to illicit any response, he continued. "The _Avenger's_ self-destruct sequence involves destabilizing the engines; seeing as how I am no longer connected to said engines, I cannot initiate it. What I can do is send out an SOS signal, requiring a team to retrieve me so I don't fall into enemy hands."

"That's brilliant!" Schumacher breathed. "We can just stay here and wait for-"

"Ah ah ah!" Yossarian cut in. "The Covenant are almost certainly capable of tracing my signal. You cannot stay here if I send it." The figure stroked his holographic stubble. "We have an opportunity to save lives, but it might cost us. If I send the signal, and the UNSC finds you here, they'll court-martial you for not destroying me."

"Probably, yeah," the sergeant admitted glumly.

"On the other hand, I'd hate to know there are still humans on Endymion whilst the Covenant hunt you all down. Escape is your most practical method of surviving."

"I think I'd rather risk the court-martial than death," Schumacher responded.

"That's your call to make," Yossarian stated. "I can't willingly put you in such danger.

So, Sergeant. What's it going to be?"


	3. Hunting for Survivors

**And I'm back with chapter three! Any issues with breaks in the story should be remedied now. In this chapter, we get introduced to a few of the alien adversaries the stranded humans will have to contend with...enjoy! If you have any comments or questions about the story, feel free to review.**

He first sensed that something was amiss when he heard deep, thunderous roaring. His palms got sweaty, and he looked around in terror. Trevor Goodwin knew that the forests of Endymion were home to some very dangerous predators-not to mention the Covenant-but he'd never heard a primeval cry of such ferocity before. He mentally went over a list of every known land-dwelling large carnivore this continent was home to, and was horrified when he reached half a dozen. That was when he heard more cries; but this time, they were of a language. He recognized the screams of Brutes.

Goodwin carefully tread through the underbrush, pushing past ferns and swatting at insects. He'd been in the taiga for a few hours, and this was the most exciting thing to happen to him since abandoning Coira. By now, he knew, there was no hope of any survivors in that city. Still, he elected to remain cautious, and primed his magnum. Excitement wasn't worth getting killed over.

The sounds of a fierce battle drew closer, so Goodwin dropped down and crawled on his stomach a couple of meters to the edge of a cliff to avoid being seen. A few dozen meters below him, an awful spectacle was taking place. A large, silver-colored beast-the major recognized it as what he and other locals referred to as a 'longneck' due to its defining characteristic-was in the midst of a fight against a pack of gold-and-blue-armored Brutes. The creature stood about two stories tall and was thrice that in length, and was using its massive claws to grab and swat at the Covenant soldiers attacking it. The longneck looked and hunted like a prehistoric theropod, and was apparently enraged by the Brute's Phantom being parked on its territory. Goodwin watched as it picked a Brute up and chomped the alien's head off, before turning its attention to the violet spaceship. The remaining Brutes fired their weapons and grenades, but those mostly only angered the creature. What the Covenant seemed not to know was that longnecks had thick scales forming natural armor over their stomachs. Besides Brutes, the beast was tearing apart Skirmishers, some of which foolishly thought they could dash underneath it and launch barrages of plasma from there. The few feathered Covenant Goodwin saw try that tactic usually ended up trampled by the massive carnivore without doing anything but provoking the animal.

A handful of Drones hovered overhead, taking potshots at the longneck, but it began snapping them up one by one. When it spit out the mashed-up Needler one of the insectoid aliens had been using, a Brute managed to get in a lucky throw with a plasma grenade. The pulsing blue orb stuck to the one of the beast's canine teeth and exploded, sending chunks of the lower jaw in all directions. The longneck roared in fury, whipped around its tail and, with a satisfying thwack, launched a cobalt-armored Brute into a tree. Bleeding and frenzied, the beast charged at the Phantom and began tearing at it, and one Brute launched itself at it, plunging the blade of its Brute Shot into the leg of its enemy. From there, it squeezed the trigger and sent compact shells slamming into the longnecks' thigh at point-blank range. The monster turned its head and roared at the Brute, but a Drone slammed into its eye and fired an overcharged bolt of plasma into it. Blind and with a broken leg, the gargantuan creature tried to retreat, but the Brutes, enraptured by the thrill of the hunt, hounded it to the edge of the tree line, where it lost its footing on a log and tripped. The Covenant soldiers rushed to the beast and, with concentrated fire to its neck from half a dozen types of weapons, ended its life.

While the Covenant were cheering for their victory, Goodwin had noticed something odd about the Phantom: hidden inside it was the still body of a human Marine. There seemed to be some blood on the body, but not enough to make him completely sure the poor soldier wasn't still alive. He searched for a way down the cliff, but the sides of the canyon appeared too steep. However, it seemed like the Covenant were too interested in their kill to notice him. He took a chance, found some footing, and started to carefully maneuver down the cliff. When he looked over at his enemies, he saw them celebrating the longneck's death, and some Brutes were cutting off strips of flesh and tasting them. Goodwin sprinted over to the Phantom, but was caught by some Drones. A chattering noise above him made him look up; once he did so, two of the emerald bugs flew down and tried to grasp him. Walking backward to the best of his ability, the major took out his gun and fired. One round blew the eye off a Drone, and two more impacted the chest of the other. He turned around and leapt into the dropship as the other Covenant troops took note of his presence. By the time he got to the bridge of the ship and raised the doors, one Skirmisher was only an inch away from them.

Breathing heavily, Goodwin tried his hand at piloting the Phantom. The pounding of the bloodthirsty aliens clawing to get inside was nerve-wracking enough, but having to deal with equipment he barely knew how to handle was just adding to the misery. He could hear them prying at the doors...he needed to lift off, fast. Finally, something worked, and the Phantom hovered a few feet upwards. Goodwin took it up even higher, not bothering to learn how to use the plasma turret on the underside of the ship. The snarls below him faded as he gained altitude and put some distance between himself and the Covenant.

After almost an hour of continuous flight, he set the ship down by the shores of a small lake. He took a glance at his tacpad to see where he was, and was pleased to notice that a rally point he had set up for his soldiers was only a few miles away. With luck, some of them would already be there.

Something else required immediate attention, though. Goodwin rose from the command chair and walked into the troop bay. The still form of the Marine lay in a corner and, now that he had time to actually look at it, he could tell the man was deceased. Crouching before the body, Goodwin surveyed it: tan skin, brown hair, a cut across the forehead. The man was missing some pieces of armor, as well. There were a few bloody gouges in the torso; these must have come from Maulers, the type of miniature shotgun that some Brutes carried. Thank goodness the eyes were already closed; he hated to touch dead, clammy skin, and just the thought of it brought back unpleasant memories. Carefully avoiding said skin, he plucked the dog tags from around the man's neck and looked them over. They read:

Ian McClellan  
48922-48165-IM  
AB+  
60th Infantry Battalion  
38th Marine Regiment

"Rest in peace, Ian," Goodwin whispered. He shoved the tags into a storage pouch on his thigh armor, then went to the cockpit, opened the bay doors, and gently lifted the body and placed it outside. The major dug a shallow grave with his hands and deposited the corpse there. After covering it up lightly with dirt, he wiped his hands on his military-regulation pants and entered the Phantom, where he checked his tacpad to ensure he knew where he was heading. Then, he sat in the pilot's chair and resumed his journey to a location which, hopefully, was plentiful with living humans.

 **xxx**

As she approached the coordinates for the rally point, Jennifer Rosche had doubts that whichever Army bigwig who sent it had provided the right information. The coordinates led to a small grouping of warehouses and tiny residential buildings on the outskirts of a forest. She hopped out of the car she had been driving and told her passengers to do the same. Corporal Washington stepped over to her, while the two civilians stood a ways back. "Are you sure it's safe?" the older man, named Amos, asked.

"Let's find out," Washington replied. She hefted her shotgun and walked towards the warehouses. As she drew close to one, she slid in place next to a door and opened it just a crack. "Well, thank God!" the others heard her exclaim.

"What is it?" Rosche yelled as she ran to her friend's position. She saw the other ODST enter the warehouse, and followed her, only to be greeted by some smiling human soldiers.

"I thought...well, I'm glad some Helljumpers made it out okay!" one woman said. She walked up to Rosche and Washington as the latter two took off their helmets. "Are you the only ones here?"

"No, we...Amos! Patrick!" Washington called outside. "We found some friendlies!" Within moments, the two men came to the warehouse and were shyly making introductions. The soldiers who had arrived at the base showed them their transport Warthog, which Patrick seemed interested in looking at. Amos, on the other hand, was much more focused on leaving.

"When are we going to go?" he demanded of the ODSTs after twenty minutes of them stockpiling provisions and scoping out the area. "We can't stay here forever." He stood there, tapping his foot impatiently with his arms crossed, until Washington, who had been gulping down a canteen of water, responded.

She wiped her lips and coldly stated, "You can leave whenever you like. We saved your life, now I'd appreciate that you wait for others like we're doing. There are only nine people here, Amos; there are still going to be more arriving."

"You don't know that!" he snapped. "I'd rather leave before the Covenant find-"

"Hey! Knock it off, will ya? We'll head out when we're sure no one else is coming," an Army engineer yelled from across the room, where he was playing an old pen-and-paper game, hangman, with two of his buddies. "Don't worry about the split-jaws, okay? They won't find us." Amos groaned and stalked off. His pessimistic presence wasn't missed.

 **xxx**

Slowly but surely, teams of soldiers started to arrive, and even a handful of civilians managed to find the rally point. Whether alone or in small groups, they had navigated thick forests and avoided dangerous predators to reach the collection of warehouses. Rosche had been stretching her legs outside as the sun lowered over the horizon when she caught a glimpse of a familiar figure coming up a dirt road from Coira. It was wearing ODST armor with orange details, and there was only one person it could be. "Tarkov?" she said, surprised. The figure looked up and waved. Rosche rushed over to her Lieutenant and saluted. "Lieutenant, sir! We thought you were dead!"

"Who else is here, Jen?" Tarkov inquired.

"Just me and Wash, sir. We haven't seen Boomer or Jack since the drop, and we lost track of Cortez just outside the city."

Tarkov took off his helmet, and his subordinate was taken aback to find him extremely worn out. "Let's hope those boys are alright," he stated hopefully. He then asked Rosche to show him around the compound. Upon his arrival, he'd just become the man in charge due to his rank, and he wanted to get to know those under his command.

By nightfall, almost three dozen men and women, and even one young little girl no older than ten, had settled in the various buildings. The higher-ranking soldiers had been thorough in ensuring that any vehicles, whether they be Mongooses, Warthogs, or normal cars or trucks, were stashed away in the woods; close enough that they could be reached relatively quickly, but far enough to discourage any Covenant ships that might come from above to think that the compound was occupied. Every single light was shut off, and each person was told to be as quiet as possible during the night. People were packed like sardines into the buildings and made to sleep on the cold floors. At first, there was some protest, notably from Amos, but when those who didn't feel like being uncomfortable were made to realize the alternatives, complaining came to a halt.

Tarkov, once again relishing the position of command, took the first watch, along with two young Army soldiers. Though they belonged to a different branch of service, they knew the situation they were in could doom them all if they didn't listen to someone who kept a cool head. Tarkov, for his part, tried not to strain the soldiers he now had command of. As he and the other two men hunkered wordlessly in a warehouse adjacent to the one everyone else was resting in, he let them drift off somewhat. He'd wake them if trouble arose.

Less than an hour after sunset, he heard something just barely audible. He knew the sound well: the humming engines of a Covenant Phantom. Instantly, he shook awake the other guards, who had been dozing off. He put a finger to his lips, and cupped his ear. The other two sat perfectly still, and the dawning realization came upon their faces at the same time. They reached for their pistols and made sure they had enough rounds to last a firefight.

The noise of the Phantom grew louder, and Tarkov could soon see it through a window, floating just above the treetops, illuminated by Endymion's moons. The turquoise lights floated just above the compound, and Tarkov's heart almost stopped when the vehicle started to descend. Had it seen them? Impossible. Still, he gripped his DMR, put on his helmet and turned on the VISR mode. The Phantom was illuminated in red, but, as the doors on the side of it lowered, Tarkov saw only a human-shaped figure outlined in yellow step out. The person looked around, and the three guards heard him-for it was male-speak. "Hello?" They didn't reply, not just yet. "Is anyone here?" the man cried out. "Anyone?"

Tarkov opened the door to the warehouse and walked slowly towards the man, keeping his rifle at the ready, just in case. The figure saw him and rushed over. "Thank God!" he cried in relief. "Are you-yeah, you're the ODST from Reach! It's me, Major Goodwin!"

 **xxx**

The men and women who had been soundly sleeping were extremely upset when Goodwin burst into the warehouse and ordered them to get their asses outside. Tarkov wasn't keen on relinquishing command, but he accepted it. Goodwin could motivate the troops better than he could. Case in point: most of the soldiers, albeit groggily, got up, welcomed back the major, and obeyed his orders. The civilians, on the other hand, were less compliant. "Only an hour of sleep?" Tarkov heard one dark-skinned, bald man mutter. "Give me a break. I'm glad I never signed up for this military BS." He also noticed a young girl, who seemed very hesitant about approaching the Phantom that Goodwin had arrived in. Only after Washington, of all people, took her hand and led her into it did she seem to feel comfortable.

"When did you get so good with the kids?" he asked. She didn't reply. Tarkov let her keep her secrets; after all, he had plenty of his own. He sat down and surveyed the dropship's interior. Three dozen people sitting, barely talking, and some had gone back to sleep. Goodwin had asked some of the soldiers who had more experience with Covenant technology to assist him with piloting, and they seemed to do so efficiently. The dropship took off without a hitch and sailed into the night sky. Tarkov didn't know for certain where they were headed; the Phantom couldn't hold many more people, so landing at another rally point wouldn't allow everyone to get onboard. Then again, the one he was at had been the closest; chances are, the other rally points would be scarcely populated. Either way, Tarkov hunkered down and joined some of the others in sleep. Washington or Rosche could always wake him if they needed him.

 **xxx**

Some of the troops were happy, and some weren't. The decision Schumacher had made weighed heavily on their minds. "I can't believe this," Hong cried, disgusted. "You put all of our lives in danger."

"It's our best and only option to get offworld!" her sergeant pleaded. "Without Yossarian, we're stuck here 'til the day we die!"

"You could've at least asked us!" the gunner Aberwitz stated. "What are we supposed to do, fly around and hope the UNSC finds us before we run out of fuel?" Schumacher's red, tear-streaked face confirmed that this was her plan.

"Conway, shut the hell up," pilot Moreno responded angrily from her position in the entrance to the cockpit. She glared at her copilot. "At least now we have an opportunity. Do you want to see your girlfriend again? What about your parents? Huh?" Aberwitz shook his head not in denial, but in anger, and pushed past her to get back in the cabin.

"Come on, guys, calm down," Crawford said weakly. No one paid her any attention. The passengers of the Pelican were sharply divided, and her job was to mend wounds, not restore trust. She peeked over at her gunnery sergeant and paid attention to the AI data chip that was clenched in her fingers. She wasn't sure if the AI Yossarian could contribute to the discussion, but, if he could, he was being awfully quiet. The sudden rush of the engines as they activated sent a jolt down her spine and refocused her on the human passengers. It appeared that Aberwitz and Moreno wanted to get an early lead on any Covenant who might be tracking them.

Crawford looked at her feet, near which Cortez was still recuperating from his run-in with Skirmishers. Although he'd assured her that he was feeling better, she still doubted herself, and her medical skills. There was a certain sense of pride in saving lives, but she didn't know whether she'd ever done that. In her opinion, all she did was make people more comfortable as they died. Each time she failed to save someone, it weighed heavily on her conscience. She remembered life back on Skopje, with her parents and siblings, and how simple everything had seemed. Now, everything she did seemed to have consequences.

Ban noticed that the young medic seemed upset. "You okay? Cheer up. We're not being attacked or anything."

"I beg to differ," Tom Gerencer stated. He pointed out the back of the ship where, easily visible above the treetops, a Phantom dropship was converging on their location.

"Shit! Phantom!" Schumacher charged into the cockpit. "Phantom at seven o'clock. It's coming in fast!"

"Ah, crap," Moreno muttered. "Conway, prep the missile pods. I'm turning this bird around. You'd best get back to your seat, Gunny," she ordered Schumacher, who wasted no time complying. Almost the instant she'd sat down, the Pelican was turned around by its expert pilots and flown steadily towards the approaching Covenant ship. This particular Pelican was armed with two external ANVIL missile pods, which Aberwitz was preparing to fire at the Phantom. The two craft drew closer, and, just as Aberwitz was getting a lock on the Phantom, it turned to one side and lowered its doors, revealing a group of startled humans.

"Evasive maneuvers!" Moreno yelled as she pulled her Pelican above the purple ship. She circled it once and landed on a bluff overlooking the forest. Whoever was piloting the Phantom landed there as well, and, once the pilots informed them of the occupants of the craft, the Pelican's passengers rushed outside to meet them.

A ragtag group of Marines, Army personnel and noncombatants exited the stolen ship. Among them were the other members of Omega Two-Seven, who rushed over to reunite.

"Wash! Rosche! LT! You're alright!"

"Boomer? Is that-Cortez! Jack! What happened?"

The six ODSTs met up and immediately began to recant their tales of escape and survival. The sense of camaraderie was overwhelming; these folks were excited and happy to know they were all alive. Compared to the devastation reflected in the faces of the other three dozen people there, who had all lost close friends and family, their jubilation seemed out of place. The civilians mainly stayed in the Phantom, while the soldiers aside from the ODSTs mingled around. The one man who seemed to be annoyed at this regrouping was Trevor Goodwin. He quickly sought out the leader of the Pelican's passengers, as he'd noticed that they had quite a bit of supplies in their dropship.

"Gunnery Sergeant Schumacher, you might not know me, but I'm-"

"Major Trevor James Goodwin, serial number 87518-39296-TG. Age: 37. Birthpl-"

"Who the hell is that?" Goodwin interrupted. The voice who provided his personal information was male. "Is that an AI?"

"Correct, Major," the voice said. It appeared to be emanating from Schumacher's hand, which she opened to reveal an AI data chip. "You may call me Yossarian. I was formerly of the frigate UNSC _Avenger_ before it was shot down. Gunnery Sergeant Schumacher recovered me while on a supply run, and had me send out a space-bound SOS signal."

"Look, Major Goodwin, sir...I...I...I didn't want to be stuck here forever, you know? This...this little AI, he's our best bet to-"

"Yossarian," Goodwin stated coldly, "can that signal be tracked?"

"Yes, Major."

"By the Covenant, too?"

"Yes, Major."

Goodwin's face turned ashen and he desperately wanted to break something. "Dammit...as long as that AI is here, we're in _grave_ danger."

"The UNSC won't be able to find us if we don't have him!" Schumacher pointed out. She pinched the bridge of her nose and blew aside a loose strand of hair. "I know it's risky. But I want to get home, sir. I know that you do, too." Goodwin clenched a fist, but, surprisingly, didn't snap at Schumacher like her own subordinates had.

"Let's just get moving. No hiding; from now on, we keep flying. When we run out of fuel, we start running." The sergeant gulped and nodded, although she looked close to tears. "Schumacher, if even one person gets off this planet alive, you'll be a hero. I've had to make a lot of tough choices in my career, and I hope you made the right one." He squeezed her shoulder and patted it. "Now get in your bird, and let's see if we can find anyone else on this damned rock."

"Yes, Major." The redheaded woman smiled, turned heel and began gathering up her squadmates. Goodwin, meanwhile, began ushering people into the Phantom, hastily explaining the situation to them as he did so. Some of the troops transported the medical supplies and rations to the Phantom, which was better equipped to carry them. All six of the ODSTs elected to fly onboard the Pelican. While these transactions took place, the pilots of the two vehicles got together and planned a flight course.

Some of the civilians wanted to eat the food provided to them, but Goodwin was very strict about rationing it. He only allowed one tin of dried fruit per two people, and that had to last them the whole ride. The two dropships lifted off and flew close to each other. They assumed that the Covenant ships which were currently glassing the planet's population centers had already picked up Yossarian's distress beacon and had sent teams to retrieve him. Every soldier knew that they'd waste no time picking the AI apart and potentially learn the location of Earth, Reach and other human worlds if he fell into enemy hands.

 **xxx**

Damn that human! Curse its entire kind! These thoughts coursed through Jiralhanae Major Karkavus's head as he waited for extraction. A few of his packmates had been killed by the giant silver beast earlier and, though that pained him, the embarrassment of losing his Phantom to a dastardly human interloper filled him with far greater rage. The T'vaoans and Yanme'e who had survived the great beast's attack steered clear of him as he worked on sawing its head off with his brute shot to mount later as a trophy, while his fellow Jiralhanae were taking dares on who would try to taste the monster's flesh. One of the T'vaoans started squawking excitedly and bounded towards Karkavus. "Major!" he exclaimed, "I think I've found something of importance!" He presented a piece of equipment from the human Karkavus had interrogated after being captured by Yanme'e. One of its companions had been slaughtered by the swift T'vaoans, but the other had chose to drown rather than be killed like its fellow human. Still, some of the armor and equipment had been saved for study, which seemed to Karkavus to be a smart move.

"What is it?" he huffed.

"Locations, sir! Look here: if I click this node, a map springs up. It looks to be a map of the city that the _Blessed Canticle_ is burning, along with the surrounding area." The Major looked down and plucked the device from the avian's clawed fingers. Indeed, the area on the map was covered with familiar landmarks, albeit marked by human words, and there were a few pulsating orange blips on the map.

"When we are picked up, we will need to investigate these locations," Karkavus stated. "An aerial vantage point would prove useful. They could be weapons caches, refuges, data centers..." His voice trailed off as he thought of the glory that would be bestowed upon him if one of the locations led to the discovery of the human's fabled homeworld.

 **xxx**

Despite the displeasure of having to work alongside one of the brutish Jiralhanae, Sangheili Shipmaster Lan 'Moramee admitted that Karkavus's information was potentially a game-changer. His ship, the cruiser _Blessed Canticle_ , was one of only four still operational after the damned human navy had caught the fleet exposed. Such an error yielded such a result; 'Moramee and his fellow shipmasters, both Sangheili and Jiralhanae in race, had been too eager to begin devastating the human colony world and were unprepared for a counterattack. Only by the will of the Forerunners and their devotion to the Prophets had they persevered, but at the cost of thousands of Covenant lives.

The information Karkavus had recovered from the human corpse had yielded an abundance of locations, yes; but 'Moramee had his eyes on another prize. He'd picked up a signal from a human construct, one that was easily traceable. A quick check with the other ships, which were busy glassing other cities on the planet, confirmed that they had all been able to pick up the signal with little difficulty. Whoever had sent it was heading towards one of the orange blips displayed on a hologram of the world in the command room on the _Blessed Canticle_ , visualized as a pulsing green dot. The Sangheili Shipmaster wasted no time in organizing a few lances to investigate the area. With luck, they'd reach it before the humans (surely there were more then one) did. Soon, the construct would be in Covenant hands, and the purpose of the areas marked with orange dots would be uncovered.

It may have been pride, or perhaps overconfidence, but the shipmaster was feeling very assured that any human presence on the planet would be eradicated very shortly.


	4. When a Plan Comes Together

**Hello, everybody! Sorry for the long wait, but I'm back, and this chapter is where it all hits the fan. The ultimate, foolhardy plan to escape starts here. Not everyone will make it, though. From here on out, it won't just be a matter of banding together-it'll be a matter of making it off Endymion alive.**

Two ships, one purple, one green, flew side by side at practically the same speed, but there was nothing graceful about their pattern. Tarkov, the ODST, had insisted the Phantom fly further back and take potshots at the Pelican every so often, but Goodwin thought that it would be a waste of ammo and wouldn't prove very convincing. The Army Major was determined to link up with other UNSC forces scattered across the continent, but knew there was only a small chance they would find anyone. According to the AI Yossarian, there were four enemy cruisers blasting away at the population centers of Endymion. It had already been a day since the UNSC had pulled out, and they were moving from larger cities and towns to more residential areas. The ships had even started glassing prairies, forests and oceans of the dying world. At least it was easy to avoid them: where the sky darkened and pillars of molten plasma fell to the earth, there was one place to avoid.

Luckily, the first rally point they'd landed at showed no sign of Covenant interference. It was in a small seaside community, with single-story, sun-bleached houses, where previous inhabitants had made their livings catching schools of fish for food, or larger aquatic creatures for aquariums throughout the colonies. The Pelican touched down, and its passengers hopped out to investigate the ramshackle buildings while the Phantom hovered above. The community had been abandoned a few months before the Covenant attack after a hurricane swept through the area. Although it hadn't hit the peninsula the tiny village was positioned on, rough winds had torn some roofs apart and overturned the few tropical trees that had been rooted there, so the villagers never returned. The ODSTs, along with the remnants of Schumacher's fireteam, swept the buildings looking for refugees, but found nobody. They had just regrouped at the Pelican when Goodwin called out to them on the intercom: "Troopers, be aware. The Phantom's radar just picked up 'friendly' units inbound. Get set for combat."

Inside the purple ship, a warbling voice transmitted inside the cockpit. Corporal Quentin Hurthes, the man piloting the vehicle, called out to Goodwin that they were being hailed. The radar displayed two large green triangles and three smaller green circles. Hurthes turned the ship so he could see at a better angle. "Three Banshees and two Phantoms, Major. Closing in fast."

The Elite transmission continued as the human-controlled Phantom lowered to drop off the civilians while the Pelican rose suddenly and barreled towards the approaching enemy craft. Aberwitz launched every missile, one of which turned an agile Banshee into scraps. The remaining missiles either missed the Phantoms or impacted on their hulls. The UNSC vehicle continued its flight, but this time it's chaingun spat lead at the battered ships, causing one to fall to the ground. However, one of the remaining Banshees had swung around and fired a powerful bolt of green plasma. The glob hit the Pelican's starboard engine, which exploded violently. The dropship spun around and was maneuvered _into_ the other Phantom. An incredible explosion of blue and orange engulfed both craft. " _Oh no..."_ Hurthes whispered. There couldn't have been any survivors.

An explosion buffeted the human's Phantom, although it didn't hit anywhere as vital as an engine. There were still two Banshees flying about, and some Covenant might have survived the crash of the first Phantom. Civilians who had been rushing for the safety of the buildings now turned back as the Banshees fired thin blue bolts at them. The soldiers on the ground took arms against the craft, but their bullets did nothing. Hurthes's Phantom maneuvered upwards, and two troopers manned the plasma turrets stationed at the port and starboard sides. The Banshees turned around for another attack, but that was when they were met with a steady stream of cerulean plasma directed at them. One of them was taken out, but not before it fired bolts that hit the turret gunner in the chest and neck. The man died instantly and fell into the grass below. The remaining Banshee had to turn around for another opportunity to attack, but it was brought down by the other gunner. Even as it fell, the soldiers were running to the wrecks of the larger ships. They noticed a few Covenant who had lived through the first Phantom crash and shot at them. A couple of Grunts and a Jackal fell before they had time to return fire. The group checked the inside of the Phantom and quickly mowed down the two surviving Elites inside. David Cross stepped on the skull of one until he broke it. There were tears streaming down Abby Crawford's face. Valerie Schumacher hit the hull of the downed dropship so hard that she almost broke her knuckles. They'd only known Moreno and Aberwitz for a day, but they'd grown fond of the two pilots. Now they were gone.

One of the civilians, a middle-aged woman named Bianca, had been killed by the Banshee's strafing run. With the loss of the turret gunner and the two pilots, that brought the total of dead humans to four.

For everyone who dejectedly piled into the Phantom that afternoon, it was four too many.

 **xxx**

The Unggoy on the bridge knew best to stay out of Shipmaster 'Moramee's way when he was angry, and he was _exceptionally_ angry right now. He stormed about the rectangular room in a furor, striking at all those who came near. "Am I surrounded by imbeciles?" he roared. "You have the gall to tell me that the tiny human construct is still in enemy hands? _Gah_!" He threw his ornate golden helmet to the ground. "We've lost two Phantoms already. This construct must be found."

"Perhaps the Jiralhanae can do better," Major Karkavus smirked from his position at a nearby monitor. 'Moramee marched up to the smug major and desperately wanted to lash out.

"Go back to Chieftain Velorus's ship. We don't need your help here."

Karkavus looked around innocently. "Well...I'm just _saying_...sixty of your warriors are dead and all you have to show for it is a single human ship destroyed..."

'Moramee's mandibles split and he bared them at Karkavus. His hand went to the hilt of his ceremonial energy sword. "I would slice you in half; but I do not wish to draw my weapon, for then I would have to use it, and I do not want to incite your uncle Velorus's _anger_."

The Jiralhanae shook his head. "I will never understand your customs, Shipmaster. Still, we can trace the construct's location, so I suggest we use the largest force we-"

All of a sudden, a red-armored Sangheili Zealot burst into the room. He walked up to 'Moramee and kneeled before his superior. "Shipmaster, I have less than pleasing news to report. The teams you have sent to the locations derived from the human equipment have reported back. They appeared to be only staging areas, sir. All of the vermin the teams found were killed, but, unfortunately, there was nothing that might help find other human planets."

'Moramee mulled this over. While he would have preferred to discover communications arrays or whatnot, at least Karkavus wouldn't have the pleasure of charting the investigations as a personal success. "They've done well," he said. "Tell them to return to the _Blessed_ _Canticle_." He glanced at Karkavus and clenched his fists. Damn the Jiralhanae, but he was right. Nothing short of an army could guarantee the recovery of the human construct. "We're going hunting."

 **xxx**

The little girl was crying again. Monique Washington put her arm around the young one and shushed her, and it seemed to help. "Hey...it's okay. Don't be upset. Don't be afraid."

"Those monsters...they killed everyone I ever knew...they're going to kill us, too. Aren't they?" the child asked, wiping tears from her amber eyes.

"No, no they won't. We'll fight 'em off, hun. Chin up! They can't beat us all."

"Give it a rest, trooper," an Army member said from across the troop bay. "Kid: we're doomed. All of us. There are thousands of aliens crawling all over and looking for humans. There are only thirty of us. We can't outrun them, and as long as we have that damn-"

"Language!" Washington yelled. "There's a child present. Besides, being pessimistic won't solve anything."

She knew, however, that the man was right. Their situation was bleak. It was only a matter of time before the Covenant attacked en masse. If it weren't for Moreno and Aberwitz's sacrifice, they'd all be dead, and it was all because of that damned AI. She wondered how the Covenant could still track him, hours after he'd sent out that SOS. Those alien bastards had to have access to all kinds of technology vastly superior to UNSC equivalents.

She focused her attention on the blubbering child. "I want to go home," the little girl said. "But I can't. My home is gone, and...and so is my family." She burst into tears again.

"I'm so sorry," Washington whispered.

"Why do they hate us? What did we ever do to them?"

"I wish I knew, hun. I wish I knew."

In an instant, Yossarian could read the faces of all those around him. He saw fear, anger and despair, but not hope. Ever since he'd been 'gifted' from Gunnery Sergeant Schumacher to the cockpit of the Phantom, he'd been primarily tasked with making sure the ship didn't fall out of the sky, but he redirected some subroutines to scrutinizing the humans.

Major Goodwin hated him, he knew that much. The man, especially at his imposing height, looked utterly malevolent. The AI guessed that the Major would rather take his chances in the wilderness than face the relentless hounding by the Covenant he was subjected to now. He constantly checked the radar at the control panel, scaring poor Corporal Hurthes, who appeared to think his superior would snap at any moment.

Hurthes seemed jumpy; he wasn't used to piloting Covenant ships, that much was obvious. Before each lever he pulled, or each button he clicked, he consulted Yossarian to make sure it was a safe thing to do. Sweat pooled at his brow, and his eyes were always wide. This man was scared that he might crash, regardless of his AI 'copilot'.

The third man in the dark room was more of a mystery. Yossarian couldn't see Lieutenant Tarkov's face beneath his polarized visor, but the subtle movements he made assumed the demeanor of a forlorn man. His shoulders were drooping, and his head was bowed. He didn't seem to want to be there, but he had to because of his rank. The Lieutenant had said nothing for a long time.

In a way, Yossarian felt bad for his own existence. Four human beings were dead because of his actions. He weighed the options: if a small group took him away so that others might flee, they'd be slaughtered by the Covenant and he'd be taken and dissected as the Covenant scrounge his databanks for Earth or Reach's locations. The best alternative would be the current one, where the whole group safeguards him as they try to escape.

There was one other option. He and the pilot had been investigating a message the Phantom had received, no doubt some fleet-wide order for Yossarian's own capture. He could always...no, it was too risky. Failure was the only result the AI could come up with when theorizing this hypothetical third scenario. For the first time in his year-long service, he felt like he was out of options.

 **xxx**

"Can we find somewhere to land soon?" one of the former residents of Coira asked. "I haven't used the bathroom in ages." Murmurs of agreement arose from the men and women sitting around him.

"Okay, we've been cooped up in here for hours, we've got to stretch our legs," a black-haired woman said. She marched over to the entrance to the cockpit and pounded it with her fist. "Hey! Pilot! Let us down, will you? Or else we'll soil this bloody ship!"

The woman stepped back and smiled smugly when the Phantom began a slow descent. Within a minute, it began circling a suitable landing zone, and the occupants rushed towards the exits to relieve themselves. Both soldiers and civilians trekked into the forest they'd found themselves in and did their business. Even the pilot and his ever-watchful commanding officers excused themselves from their duties. With a sigh, Major Goodwin noticed that his orders to ration food and drink had been ignored. Trash and half-eaten rations were strewn about the troop bay, and every crate had been torn into. "Even soldiers turn into animals without supervision," he muttered.

"What was that, sir?"

"Nothing, Hurthes."

Goodwin alone didn't relieve himself. He stood by the ship and tried not to pay attention to anyone in particular. He waited patiently as they came back, alone or in groups. "Hey! Cut that out!" he ordered when two enlisted men started to cram food into their gullets. They didn't listen, of course. The Major walked up to them and pulled the bag of freeze-dried potato chips from one private's hands. "Don't you idiots listen? If we don't ration our food, we'll all starve to death!"

"We'll die no matter what!" the sandy-haired private yelled. He got up and did the unthinkable: he shoved his commanding officer. "Screw you, sir, I'm out! I'd rather take my chances in the woods then be tracked by those monsters." He dug his hand into the container and pulled out a few more packages of food and water. His friend tried to restrain him, but the man took out a magnum with his spare hand and waved it around. " _Don't try to follow me_ ," he warned.

"Liam, you don't have to-" A bullet impacting into the metal next to Goodwin's feet cut the Major off. The recruit then turned around and started running into the woods. He passed by ODSTs Cortez and Cross, who both began to chase after him. "Stop! He's armed!" Goodwin cried out, but the troopers were too far away to hear him.

They chased the man past a creek and deeper into the woods. He dropped some of the rations and bent to pick them up, but a 200-pound Helljumper barreled into him when he did. Cross pinned him to the ground while Cortez stooped and recovered his pistol. "Let me go!" the private screamed.

"Why the hell were you running?" Cross roared. The private began to cry. He lifted the man's collar. "Answer me!"

"I don't want to die," the private sobbed. He pushed Cross's face, and the man got off of him. "Please, just leave me alone." The two ODSTs stood over the private and watched in stunned silence as tears rolled down his dirty cheeks. He clutched at his rations and pulled them close. "What's wrong with wanting to live?" The Helljumpers didn't reply. They looked at each other, saw the fatigue written across each other's face, and left the fellow as he was. As they retreated further, they heard the voice of another person. The two men hid behind a tree and looked the hundred meters towards the spot where they left the man. They saw a small group huddled there: the black-haired woman who'd asked to make the pitstop, along with the bald man Rosche and Washington had referred to as Amos and the teenager they'd said was named Patrick, and, interestingly enough, the Marine Mary Hong. The two troopers watched as the five people talked, and the black-haired lady helped Liam to his feet. They presented small packages of what looked like food and water to each other, and Hong motioned to two submachine guns holstered at her hips. After a brief conversation, Hong pointed in a direction away from the Phantom and started to walk. The other four followed her deeper into the woods.

"They're running away," Cortez whispered.

"Should we tell Goodwin?"

"I think he already knows."

 **xxx**

"They're not coming back, Major."

"I know, Yossarian."

Major Goodwin slumped against the wall of the cockpit and looked absentmindedly out the viewscreen. It had been two hours since five of the Phantom's passengers had gone AWOL, and he felt like they had the right idea. He saw it in the eyes of Hurthes, and Tarkov, and all the others: death was inevitable. There was a ten-year-old girl only a few meters behind him, and she was prepared to die for no reason. They all were.

"Sir, I've been digging through the Covenant battlenet. There's a massive force converging on our position, and it appears they'll strike sometime tonight," the AI said with a hint of sadness in his voice. "I've been mulling over the options, and I've come to a conclusion. I need to be destroyed."

"Destroyed?" Quentin Hurthes inquired. "I get that we're being tracked because of you, but, without your signal, the UNSC can't find us!"

"I don't want to cause any more deaths," the AI explained. He crossed his arms and stood adamantly. "A grenade or two should be enough." He turned his attention towards Goodwin. "What do you think, Major? I know it would prove more difficult for the UNSC to find you after my destruction, but, let's face it, we don't know when they're coming. We don't even know _if_ they're coming."

Goodwin was silent for a long time. Hurthes fidgeted nervously, but Yossarian stood perfectly still, waiting for the Major to speak his mind. Finally, the Major spoke. "I don't know," he breathed. He put his head in his hands, then lashed out and slammed his fist against the wall. "I don't know, dammit!" The Phantom continued on, and those in the troop bay who had heard Goodwin's outcry told the others to be quiet so they could hear his decision.

"We could always...give you up," Hurthes suggested.

"And risk giving away Earth's location? You'd trade _our_ lives for the lives of billions of innocents?"

"Not at all, sir!" Hurthes stated, shaking his head. "I'm...I mean...Yossarian was trying to crack a message we received, and...if they can track him with their ships, I think we could do the same."

Goodwin stared at the young pilot with equal parts confusion and malice. "Explain," he ordered.

"This string of text appeared shortly after the Pelican was...destroyed," Hurthes replied as he pointed to a small control screen covered with static orange symbols. He avoided the sensitive topic of how they'd lost the UNSC dropship.

"Hurthes, no!" Yossarian warned. "A retrieval team would still die! You aren't SPARTANs, you don't have the capabilities to recover me from the crew of a Covenant ship!"

"Shut up, AI," Goodwin said with disgust. He pointed a finger at the pilot. "What's your plan, kid?"

"I think that we could let Yossarian be captured, allow him to be transferred to a Covenant ship, then recover him and steal a ship with Slipspace capabilities." He paused and looked down at his feet. "Yossarian does have a good point, though. We only have thirty soldiers, and they'd have hundreds, if not thousands."

Goodwin bit his lip and mulled over this foolhardy, albeit well-intentioned, plan. Finally, he exhaled sharply and responded. "Seems like an awfully big risk. If we fail, then the Covenant can easily extrapolate the coordinates of every human colony world."

"Aye, sir."

"This is why I didn't consider it!" Yossarian said. "It's much too risky."

"It's the only real plan we've got," Hurthes argued. "It's up to you, Major. I know how this could be, but-"

"Do it. Yossarian? Disconnect. Now."

"Major?!" The AI seemed shocked.

"You said the Covvies would attack tonight. Well, the sun just set. We're vulnerable," Goodwin said harshly. "If we're gonna die, we're gonna die fighting on our terms. So disconnect. Hurthes, get this ship on the ground and bury him in the dirt," he ordered.

"Aye aye, sir."

"But Major!" Yossarian interjected. "What if the Covenant destroy this Phantom?"

"They won't, and for two reasons. One: if they're anything like us humans are, they would never just waste resources like that. And two: they aren't gonna find it." He pointed to a mountain range a few dozen kilometers away. "We'll be hiding behind there, where we'll unload the civilians and go after you."

"You won't have much time," Yossarian said just before Hurthes took his data chip out of the control panel.

"We'll make the most of it." The spark of leadership was firmly on Goodwin's mind. He was formulating a plan, and he intended to make it work.

 **xxx**

Both the planet's moons hung in the sky as an armada of Phantom and Spirit dropships, supported by Banshee fighters, floated through the darkness like a school of predatory fish. More than fifty ships in total from each of the surviving Covenant cruisers, they posed a force to be reckoned with. Lan 'Moramee grew more anxious as they grew closer to the location that the human construct was allegedly at. Reports indicated that it hadn't been moved in a few hours, which he took as a good sign that their plan at stealth had worked and they were going to catch the humans as they slept.

"Shipmaster, we need to be alert," said Sangheili Zealot Anro 'Kedroee, who stood next to 'Moramee alongside a few other Sangheili, a lance of Unggoy and a pair of hulking Mgalekgolo. The maroon-armored warrior seemed uneasy. "This opportunity for an ambush may very well prove to be a trap."

"Patience, 'Kedroee. We will be cautious, but we cannot waste an opportunity like this," the Shipmaster explained. He readied a plasma rifle, as did the Zealot beside him. As they neared the landing zone, the Banshees pulled ahead to survey the area. One of the pilots reported in.

"No sign of any humans! Where could they be?" The twenty-odd violet craft flew in slow, long arcs over the target area, which was suited in the midst of a dense forest.

"That does not matter!" 'Moramee responded. "Report back to the main force." His Phantom and two Spirits lowered to the ground and their passengers leapt out, immediately scanning the area in hopes of spotting a human to kill. But the only things that moved were the leaves rustling in the wind, and a few small, nocturnal birds taking to the sky. The Shipmaster halted his team and they stood silently listening for quite some time. Finally, he radioed the pilot of his Phantom. "Is this the right place?"

"You should be right next to it, sir."

'Moramee looked around and saw nothing. He kicked at the dirt with a growl of rage, only to spot a small silver chip among the debris. Ushering a pair of inquisitive Unggoy away from it, he bent down and snatched it from the ground. It was a thin rectangle with a hole cut through the middle, across which holographic green bands of energy stretched. 'Moramee was elated: at long last, the construct was his! "Quickly, to the _Blessed_ _Canticle_!" he ordered. He hurried to the Phantom, but saw that the soldiers around him appeared confused. "It is found!" he explained. "We must return at once!" A cry of celebration erupted from the Covenant troops as they followed their leader into the ships. Once a quick check to ensure everyone was onboard was made, the armada set off towards their respective cruisers. While most of the soldiers were unhappy that there wasn't a battle to participate in, they were so relieved at finally having recovered the construct that they didn't care.

"It was too easy," 'Kedroee warned. "This has to be a trap. That thing could have a virus in it, or some kind of bomb-"

The Shipmaster held out a hand. "Do not worry. We will have Huragok look over the construct extensively before anything else." This appeased the worried Zealot, who nodded approvingly. 'Moramee, however, thought such an act would be a waste of time. The humans were undoubtedly tired, scared, and utterly incapable of fooling the Sangheili with their primitive technology. Why even test for viruses or bombs when there wouldn't be any? What could the humans do with the time that they had had to trick the mighty Covenant Empire?

Awash with revelry, nobody onboard the Covenant dropships which returned to the _Blessed_ _Canticle_ realized that they had one more ship in their flotilla than they'd set out with. The Phantoms and Spirits flew quickly and, soon after landing, Shipmaster 'Moramee gathered a small crowd to view his conquest. "With this device," he told the crowd of awestruck Unggoy and Sangheili engineers, "we will find the human homeworld and eliminate every last vermin crawling on it!" Hearty cheers erupted from the onlookers. The fact that one Phantom's crew had yet to disembark mattered little to them.

Inside said Phantom, however, six ODSTs, fifteen Army soldiers and ten Marines readied their weapons for battle. Quentin Hurthes was locating a suitable Slipspace-capable ship for them to utilize, and the others were armed to the teeth and awaiting the order to attack. The five remaining civilians had been left behind with the supplies, with the promise of a way to escape the dying planet if the UNSC forces were successful. The plan was simple on paper: Major Goodwin would lead his soldiers to Hurthes's designated ship and commandeer it, while the Marines and ODSTs would find and recover Yossarian. Goodwin surveyed the room: circular, bathed in soft purple light from innumerable plasma lights, filled with docked dropships, with Banshee and Seraph fighters stored on a second level. "Do you see anything that might have an impulse drive?" he asked the pilot.

"Ummm...no. But these cruisers usually have multiple hanger bays. Surely, there's something in one of them."

"If we don't move now," Sergei Tarkov warned, looking deadly in full ODST armor, "we might lose track of Yossarian. Look-that one Elite is showing him off like a prize over by that staircase." True enough, through the viewscreen, one Elite, ornately dressed in golden armor, seemed to be preaching to a group of fascinated Grunts and other members of its kind. Suddenly, it looked at the ceiling and appeared to snarl. It motioned to the other aliens, who ran out of the room, weapons drawn. The gold-armored Elite walked slowly after them. Tarkov readied a DMR and walked to the raised ramp, standing beside the rest of his team, all of whom had their guns out. "Ready?" he called to the cockpit. Goodwin nodded and motioned to Hurthes, who pulled a lever at the control station.

The ramp lowered, and the humans charged forth.


	5. Blessed Canticle

**Welcome back! This chapter is the most action-packed yet-I hope you enjoy it. We're halfway done with Lest We Be Forgotten already, so remember to review it if there's anything you want to know about the story. I'm not going to spoil anything, but I think you're going to like the end of this one.**

Onboard the Blessed Canticle, a battle had begun. Within moments, nearly a dozen Sangheili, Kig-Yar and Unggoy had been killed as the human soldiers pressed their attack. A smattering of bullets hit Lan 'Moramee's energy shields, and they flared blue with every impact. He growled and slunk through a set of motion-activated doors just as his own warriors started to return fire. The Shipmaster had pressing matters to attend to, much as he'd like to help murder the insolent human scum. He had to get the construct to safety so the Huragok and other texxxchnicians could try to extrapolate the location of more populous human colonies. There was also a more recent matter to attend to: 'Moramee had received an odd report from his bridge crew that an explosion from an unknown source had destroyed a portion of the hull at the uppermost levels of the cruiser. They assumed it was a meteorite, and 'Moramee had sent a team to investigate. He needed to get back to the bridge to hear what they'd discovered there. Along with a single Sangheili Minor who acted as a temporary bodyguard, he rushed to the nearest elevator to meet with his bridge crew, feeling like everything was under control.

Anro 'Kedroee, meanwhile, was feeling overwhelmed. The Zealot was leading the assault against the human invaders, but things weren't working out smoothly. He had fallen back behind some weapon-holding crates, which were unfortunately devoid of any guns, and fired bolts from his carbine at the vermin, watching in horror as they charged straight into the fray and took down his troops. Six of them were wearing black armor with various colored patches, while the rest seemed to be run-of-the-mill grunts. He chuckled at the fact that 'grunts' was the term that they normally used to describe the Unggoy, but quickly focused himself on the firefight after watching two of the eponymous Unggoy get shot in the head and perish. Peeking around the crate, he saw a group of Kig-Yar move forward and provide protection for an Unggoy, who unslung two plasma grenades, lit them, and hurled them at the enemy. The humans dived for cover, and that was when 'Kedroee chose to strike. As one of the black-armored soldiers tried to get up, he bounded forward, firing his carbine and striking the human in the shoulder. Only a few blasts hit their mark before 'Kedroee had to retreat. He saw one of the humans throw a grenade, and he leapt out of the way. Pieces of shrapnel embedded into the bottom of his feet as the device exploded, and he swore. The Zealot struggled to get to his feet, but the pain was too great. He looked up and snarled at a human who walked up to him and took aim with a long-barreled gun. 'Kedroee took this moment to light a plasma grenade and launched it squarely at the face of his attacker. The human screamed in horror and tried to claw the grenade off, but to no avail. A blinding flash enveloped it, and bloody chunks fell everywhere. The body collapsed to its knees and fell, headless, to the ground at the Sangheili's feet. Some of the humans shrieked at the spectacle, and half a dozen of them turned their guns on 'Kedroee and fired. The Sangheili twisted his mandibles into a smile as he saw a Kig-Yar sniper fire two pink, crystalline needles into the neck of one human, which fell with a satisfying thud to the floor. Then, his shields disappeared, and round after round slammed into his skull, delivering unto him the greatest journey of all.

 **xxx**

An Elite roared and charged at Cross, firing its carbine as it did so. A few bolts hit his left shoulder, but his armor protected him. Cortez took out a frag grenade and tossed it at the Elite. The explosion rocketed it off its feet and on the hard metal ground next to the Phantom. Cross watched as one of the Army soldiers attempted to finish the wounded alien off with a shotgun, only to end up catching a plasma grenade to his face. "No, no, no!" the man called as he scratched at the glowing blue orb. The ODST winced as his head was torn to bits in the ensuing blast. He drew his assault rifle and shot at the alien, as did some of the humans around him. A cry rang out, and Cross turned around to see a Marine fall to the ground, with two pink shards in her neck. DeWitt and Washington turned their focus on the pesky Jackal who had done the deed and let loose with ammo from their DMRs, striking the sniper in the chest and neck. Even as it slumped down, the UNSC forces charged after its fellow aliens, killing another Elite as it tried to escape through a motion-sensing door. Still, a few had escaped, and everyone knew that enemy reinforcements were on the way.

Major Goodwin rallied his remaining troops around a Spirit and gave them their assignments as clearly as he could. "Marines, Helljumpers, your objective is to find Yossarian and bring him to whichever hanger bay we're in. The Army will search for any ship with an impulse drive, while Hurthes stays behind and monitors Yossarian's position." The pilot, for his part, had yet to reveal himself and partake in the battle; just in case the Covenant had any cameras trained on them, they wouldn't see him return to his ship since he hadn't left it in the first place. Goodwin's gaze rested momentarily on the corpses of the two soldiers who had just been killed. "Let's get this over with," he muttered.

"Ooh rah!" Lieutenant Tarkov cried, pumping his fist in the air. He started off towards the door, and the other surviving Marines and ODSTs jogged after him. The Army bounded out a different doorway in search of another hanger bay, and Quentin Hurthes was left utterly alone. He didn't mind it; it was quite relaxing. He focused on tracking Yossarian and assisting the Marine team, unwilling to think of what might happen if the Covenant stumbled across him. "Alright," he whispered on the TEAMCOM channel to the ODST lieutenant, "the AI is located about three hundred meters away, moving fast towards the middle of the ship. It should be a few floors above you, too." He fiddled with the alien controls and tried to find which room the elevators would be in. "I'm trying to find some lifts, but-"

"No need!" he heard the Helljumper grunt. "We've found them. How many floors up is he?"

Hurthes checked the holographic map. "One...no, two. Be careful, it looks like that floor is particularly important." He waited for a reply, but didn't hear anything. Patiently, he sat still until Tarkov turned on his communicator minutes later. A chill went up the pilot's spine; he wasn't prepared for what he heard. Gunfire, explosions, the sounds of the wounded and dying. 'It's only been two minutes!' Hurthes thought. He switched on his own communicator. "What the hell is going on?" he cried frantically.

There was no response.

 **xxx**

There were three small, mechanical lifts of relatively simplistic design, and none of them were in use when the Marines got to them. Five people went into each one, and Sergei Tarkov passed on the location of the AI through the TEAMCOM, receiving acknowledging signals from Rosche, Abby Crawford, and the other Marines in his elevator. The soft purple light of the elevator illuminated them, and one soldier started mumbling to himself. Tarkov looked at him, and the intimidating visage he displayed was enough to make the man stop.

The doors opened with a sort of humming noise, and the five Marines shouted and swore in shock. Standing only a few meters in front of them were no less than a dozen Elites, supported by a pair of hulking Hunters. Every enemy combatant had their weapons drawn, and with a crisp shout from a white-armored Ultra, they fired. The fifteen Marines bolted away from the elevators, although some were singed by blue or green globs of plasma. The five troopers in the middle elevator were practically sitting ducks. The Hunters' assault cannons let loose streams of brilliant green light that melted through armor and flesh. Tarkov, who had been shepherding his allies away from the action, forced himself to look. The men and women in that elevator barely had any time to cry out; one man had a head-sized hole punched through his torso, and another Marine's arm and chest melted away and she fell to her knees, gaping in horror, seconds before a blue bolt from a plasma rifle hit her squarely in the forehead and ended her. The remaining three soldiers trapped in the lift, including ODSTs David Cross and Oscar Cortez, were under heavy fire. "Move, move!" Tarkov heard Cortez yell, and the three dashed out to their right, in the lieutenant's direction. Despite the barrage of plasma bolts impacting the walls behind them, it seemed like they might make it to safety.

One single action changed that.

Tarkov couldn't see which of the bastard Elites had thrown it, but a plasma grenade landed between Cortez, who was in front of the other two, and Cross. The former made a diving leap into cover, rolling to a stop a foot to Tarkov's left. The Marine behind Cross gave him a shove, which sent him tumbling end over end to safety. The man who had pushed him, though, had his legs blown out from under him, and his upper half flew upwards and hit the ceiling, only to fall back down with a wet, sloppy crunch. Tarkov had to suppress the urge to vomit at seeing such a disgusting sight. In all his years as a Helljumper, he'd seen some messed-up things, but this was one of the worst.

On the other side of the corridor, the surviving humans let loose a barrage of grenades, which filled the room with shrapnel when they detonated. The Elites' shields flickered and died, and some of them were rendered limbless like that poor Marine. 'Payback's a bitch, ain't it?' the lieutenant thought. He rounded the corner, taking aim at the Ultra, which seemed to be waiting for the plasma charges in its rifle to cool down, and fired short bursts with his battle rifle. The first round hit the alien's neck, and it jerked back, clutching its throat, before the second round of three bullets hit its chest armor. Cortez burst out of hiding and charged at the Ultra, decapitating it with a blast from his shotgun and painting his armor purple with splatters of viscous blood. Cross, ever the demoman, unslung a grenade launcher and told his squadmate to duck. Cortez wisely heeded the call, and a 40mm grenade nestled into the fleshy neck of a Hunter which had been about to crush him with its shield. Momentarily stunned, the monstrous alien didn't even react as the resulting explosion tore numerous small worms off of its body, and the entire head of the creature dissipated into orange goo.

The other Hunter, enraged at the loss of its bond-brother, ran straight towards the group of Marines it was assaulting. The five humans steadily retreated backwards and around a corner. There, they were met with a small group of Jackals and Grunts, who seemed just as surprised to see them as they were to see the aliens. Gordon Turay, Valerie Schumacher, Tom Gerencer, Monique Washington and Jackson DeWitt aimed their various weapons and fired, killing two Jackals and three Grunts in a matter of seconds. The victory over the lesser aliens, however, had momentarily distracted them from the Hunter that was following them. A tremendous slamming sound caused the latter four humans to look behind them, only to be greeted by the sight of the Hunter's razor-sharp shield impaling Turay against the bulkhead. He coughed once, looked down at the blood dripping down from his chest, and, when the Hunter pulled its shield out, he fell a few feet to the ground and was eerily still.

"Gordon!" Schumacher cried. She blasted away with her assault rifle, but she'd emptied half a magazine before realizing it was futile. She narrowly avoided a beam from the bloodthirsty Hunter and followed the others through a doorway.

"Drop your 'nades!" Washington yelled, pointing at the entrance. Luckily, her comrades understood her order and threw down active grenades at the entrance to the doorway just as it slid open for the Hunter to charge through. Although the door was busted beyond repair, the plan did little to stop the pursuing monster, as it once again charged its assault cannon and unleashed its emerald wave of death. The four humans dropped to the floor, and the Hunter ceased firing. Instead, it once again began to charge forwards and slammed its shield onto the ground. Schumacher dived between its legs, while Washington stepped backwards. DeWitt and Gerencer sidestepped the alien and unloaded their rifles at it, giving time for Schumacher to stumble towards them and out of range of its massive shield, the tip of which was still stained with Turay's blood.

Washington was still the focus of the Hunter's rage, and all she could hope to do was try not to let its flailing shield hit her. She continued to back down a hallway, but swore when she noticed a group of Elites, Jackals and Grunts approaching rapidly from an adjacent corridor. One of the Grunts pointed at her and muttered something in its own squeaky language, and the small group charged forwards. Unfortunately, the Hunter was still bearing down on her, but she had a foolish idea. She shot a Grunt in the skull with her DMR and ran right through the group. The Hunter turned the corner just as she passed the aliens and fired its assault cannon, scorching two Jackals and an Elite. Washington ducked behind the corner and heard a human shout. She then heard the sounds of bullets tearing through flesh and the crack of a shotgun. Peeking down the hallway, she noticed her teammate Oscar Cortez finishing off a wounded Grunt, as Jackson DeWitt nodded to her. The floor around them was splattered with orange, purple and blue blood, and the fresh corpses of the Hunter and the remaining four Elites and Grunts lay with numerous bullet holes strewn throughout their bodies. "Hey, Wash!" DeWitt called out. "No time for loafing around; we've got an AI to find!"

 **xxx**

The bridge of the Blessed Canticle was small, but it was crowded with Sangheili technicians, floating Huragok and the mixed-race bridge crew which normally inhabited it. Currently, Shipmaster 'Moramee was waiting impatiently as a pair of Huragok poked, prodded, dissected and reassembled the construct he'd had recovered. They purred something to a Sangheili, who walked over to his superior. "Shipmaster, the Huragok have concluded their investigation. It does not appear that this device contains any bombs or viruses, but it does hold artificial intelligence on an extremely powerful scale. If we input it somewhere in an attempt to discern any locations, it might take control of the ship."

So, the construct was still active. 'Moramee had never dealt with a human artificial intelligence before; to his knowledge, nobody in the Covenant Empire had. He stared at the tiny device, and the Huragok floated away from it so he could get a better view. "Is there any way to...break it?"

"You mean destroy me?" came an unexpected voice. The figure of a small green human appeared above the construct, faded a little, and whirred back into existence. It clasped its hands behind its back and glared at 'Moramee. "You can break my 'body' and succeed, but you may try to break my will and fail every time."

The Shipmaster was bewildered that this insolent little figment dared to talk to him in such a way. He snatched up the chip, causing the figure to disappear, and shook it vigorously. The translation devices implanted in his armor helped him understand the words just spoken, and he was eager to prove the figure wrong. "You felt them, didn't you? The Huragok. Taking you apart. You felt it, and you hated it." He chuckled softly to himself. "I've had the pleasure of torturing many a prisoner, but they all had limbs I could threaten to tear off and whatnot. You will be much more challenging to defeat, mentally and physically, but I assure you it will be done." The figure returned and stood resolute, but 'Moramee saw it flicker, and he knew that it's secrets would be given up soon.

His thoughts were disrupted by an agitated voice. "Sir?" a nervous Unggoy at the comm station reported. "Humans have reached this level. A squad of Sangheili and Mgalekgolo soldiers are trying to hold them off, with reinforcements on the way."

"Is that so?" 'Moramee glared down at the human construct. "Your allies have come to reclaim you. We shall leave them quite a surprise." He barked orders at the Huragok to get the construct to a secure location, then commanded his bridge crew and the technicians to arm themselves. However, he shoved past his subordinates in order to be first in line to use the weapons stored in the supply cases placed near the walls of the bridge. He selected his armament of choice: a lethal, long-range beam rifle. The energy beams fired by this gun could pierce almost all human body armor, and it packed such force that it usually tore a hole straight through anyone on the receiving end. Its only downsides, in his opinion, were its relative uselessness in close-quarters combat and its small ammunition capacity. Still, it could kill. That was all that mattered.

The Shipmaster kneeled, fidgeted with his ornate golden armor to feel more comfortable, and took aim at the main door leading to the bridge. He stared intently at it as his soldiers got into position, readying carbines, needlers, rifles and pistols of their own.

The humans were walking right into his trap and, with their construct out of commission, they had no way of knowing.

 **xxx**

"Hurthes? Hurthes, do you read?"

"Lieutenant!" came the relieved reply. "You're alive! I heard gunfire, what-"

"A group of Covenant attacked us," Tarkov explained. He had sent Cortez and his trusty shotgun to help take down the dangerous Hunter which had attacked Washington and DeWitt, while Rosche, Cross and three other Marines stood at the ready nearby. Some of them were surveying the corpses of the Elites they'd taken out, but they all avoided looking at the human bodies. "We suffered casualties," he sighed, "but the mission can't stop now. Are you tracking Yossarian?"

"He was staying stationary in a room three dozen or so meters to your left." The pilot sounded depressed. "He's on the move now, but a lot slower than before. You might be able to catch up to whatever it is that's taking him away."

"Roger. We'll get to him. Tarkov out." The lieutenant ended the conversation and turned to those under his command. "He's close. If we hurry, we can make it." He started off down another hallway and, without waiting for their comrades, the others followed him. After turning a corner, they noticed one Grunt streaming down an adjacent corridor, unaware of their presence.

"All gone-all gone!" the pudgy, orange-suited alien muttered. "Need to warn the Shipmaster about-" A single pistol round to the side of the head ended the Grunt's diatribe. Tarkov motioned for his squad to move up, and they found themselves in front of a large purple door set deep into the well-lit wall. Covenant glyphs adorned the center of the entrance, and it opened automatically as they reached it. Cross and Tarkov burst in, quickly scanning the area for enemies. To their surprise, there were almost a score of Elites, Grunts and Jackals, most of which were aiming their weapons right at them. A soft crack was followed instantaneously by a purple-blue shot of energy hurtling from the barrel of a rifle held by the same gold-armored Elite that had been showing off the captured Yossarian, who happened to be kneeling in the center of the room, next to a raised dais accented by a U-shaped command console. The energy beam slammed into Cross's right shoulder, causing his grenade launcher to fall from his grasp. A fraction of a second later, the Elite's rifle spat out another beam, and this one connected with Cross' visor, tearing straight through it and lurching him head over heels. The late ODST's feet almost hit one of the Marines, and he backed around a corner as fast as he could.

"Cross!" Tarkov screamed. He fired his magnum at the Elite that had killed his young teammate, and each bullet that connected caused the alien to flinch, breaking his concentration and giving time for the remaining humans to back away. A few needles from a Grunt managed to embed themselves in his side, but Tarkov was focused on getting his soldiers out alive. As everyone hid in the corridor, they noticed Cortez's group running to join them. "Don't go in there!" Tarkov yelled. "The bastards killed David!"

"They what?" Cortez sounded enraged, and his group stood on the other side of the corridor, with the door in between the two parties. The faces of the Marines looked crestfallen; Tarkov noticed that one of them-the one who said he'd been Cross' cousin-was missing. "Those sons of bitches killed him? He was only with us a year! No, less!"

"I know!" Tarkov tried not to cry, but got choked up. He'd known close friends, battle-hardened teammates, innocent civilians and even his own cousin, all of whom had died in battle, but to see a man only 24 years old? It was sickening. Poor Boomer had never stood a chance, and he deserved better than to rot on this forsaken ship. The grizzled lieutenant clenched his fist. "We...are going...to get...revenge," he stated menacingly. "Cortez, take your helmet off," he ordered as he removed his own. "Stick it over the side."

"Really?" the master sergeant said. "You think they'll fall for it? It's the oldest trick in the book."

"Beam rifles can fire two shots in a second, but after that they need time to recharge," Jennifer Rosche interjected. "Whenever we fire at that Elite, we disrupt his concentration. I say we do it." Suddenly, a pulsating plasma grenade whizzed through the doorway, and the humans backed away from it. The resulting explosion didn't injure anyone, but it gave Tarkov the opportunity to put his plan into action. He nodded once at Cortez, and the two men stuck their helmets into the hallway as though they were looking at the Covenant holed up in the command center. A thin, deadly beam tore through one, then the other, and the humans rushed en masse through the doorway. Bullets slammed into the surprised Elite commander's armor, and other Covenant moved in closer to protect him. Two Jackals placed themselves in front of their leader, and the large blue shields extending from their gauntlets absorbed most of the bullets, giving the Elite time to dart away from the humans. The marksmen among the human soldiers shot the fingers off one of the avians, and Marine Tom Gerencer flanked to the left of it and riddled it with rounds from his assault rifle. The creature cackled once and flopped over, but Gerencer's victory was short-lived. A glob of emerald energy flew from the plasma pistol of a Grunt and bore into his back. The man cried in pain and stumbled to the ground next to the other Jackal, who planted its foot on the injured Marine and quickly fired pink shards from its needler weapon into its victim's back. Crawford, the medic, focused her fire on the Jackal's temporarily exposed head, and the bullets of her SMG narrowly missed the edge of its circular shield and lodged into the alien's skull, caving in a portion of its raptor-like head. She ducked under a stream of blue bolts from a plasma rifle and slid next to her downed comrade. The medic gripped his shoulder and turned him around, only to gaze into glazed eyes. She bit her lip and nervously shot a short burst into the chest of an advancing Grunt. Her whole body was shaking slightly.

"How is he?" Sergeant Schumacher asked. She took to one knee next to Crawford and lowered the energy shields of a carbine-wielding Elite that was promptly finished off with a headshot from an ODST's designated marksman rifle.

"He's gone," Crawford muttered. She flinched as a bolt of plasma scorched her helmet and helped two of the ODSTs return fire at the Elite that had shot at her. "Just...ergh...just you and me left, ma'am."

"And that bitch Hong," Schumacher added. "But let's not dwell on that." She touched the young medic's arm and the two women followed an ODST up a short ramp towards a bunch of glowing holographic consoles. The three soldiers killed the two Grunts defending it and took up position there. Down below, they heard a warbling scream. The yellow-armored ODST had thrown her combat knife at the Elite commander, but one of its subordinates had gotten in the way of the blade. The commander cried something, and fired a beam that narrowly missed the ODST lieutenant before dropping its gun and using its wounded comrade as a bullet shield. Dozens of bloody holes appeared in the blue-armored Elite Minor's body as the higher-ranking splitjaw pulled the corpse through a motion-activated door and disappeared from sight. A small band of other Covenant soldiers used a different exit to escape, and the LT called for the surviving humans to rally around him over by the spot where they'd first spotted the Elite commander. The green and red accented ODSTs carried their teammate's body and gently laid it next to that of Gerencer. Those who hadn't had their helmets destroyed preceded to take their own 'buckets' off and salute. Tarkov, with his battle-scarred visage stoic as always; Cortez, with his laughably thick hair hardly hiding his sorrow; DeWitt, with a father's caring face twisted like he'd just lost a son; Washington, a normally fiery woman close to tears, and Rosche, clutching her own dog tags as she bent to retrieve her friend's.

Schumacher, Crawford and the other two Marines stood somewhat farther away, each with their helmets off and their heads drooping. Suddenly, a high-strung voice warbled from the redheaded sergeant's earpiece. "Gunnery Sergeant Schumacher, please respond!" It was Quentin Hurthes. "I can't raise Lieutenant Tarkov; is anyone still alive?"

"What? Hurthes?" the surprised woman replied. "I'm here. Tarkov is, too. We took some casualties, but we still have nine Marines ready to fight. Are you still tracking Yossarian?"

"Well...yes, actually. But there's something strange going on. He used to be a lot further away, but it appears like he's getting closer."

"Why would the Covenant bring him towards us?" Schumacher wondered aloud. Tarkov and Cortez had jogged up to her and were listening intently to the conversation.

"No clue. But you need to capitalize on this, fast. If you guys can't get Yossarian back, then our only other option is destroying this ship and hoping he goes down with it."

Schumacher pursed her lip. "Is that what Goodwin said?"

"I'm afraid so...hang on. This looks bad."

"What does?"

"A squad of Elites and Skirmishers. Oh boy, they're on the floor above me. I...my position might be compromised." The radio went silent. By this time, most of the ODSTs had flocked to Schumacher to listen to what Hurthes had to say. They started to murmur to each other, and everyone looked extremely worried.

"What are we going to do?" Washington whispered to her LT.

"There are two exits...they both lead in the same direction," Tarkov said, taking note of the command room. "One final effort. We go through the closest one, and fight any damn Covenant we see. Understood?"

"Sir, yes sir!" came the resounding reply. Everyone put on their helmets, save for Tarkov, Cortez and Crawford, the latter of which had to adjust her bun before leaving the room, prompting her sergeant to roll her eyes. Crawford bent down before exiting and took Gerencer's dog tags before leaving, much like she had done with many of the members of her team that had died on the planet's surface. "Abby, hurry up," Schumacher snapped at her. She was waiting impatiently by the door the others had gone through.

Crawford looked up and sighed. "Sorry, it's...it's just...I couldn't save them, Sarge. I'm a medic, that's what I'm trained to do. But I failed." The young brunette bowed her head. "All my life...it's hard, okay?" She blew out a sigh and shrugged, struggling to find the right words. "I've never had friends leave me, because I never really had any. I was too tall. I wasn't pretty or popular enough. I'm still a teenager, ma'am. Is this what being an adult is like? My brother has a newborn daughter; my sister is engaged! And me? I'm stuck here, watching the only friends I've ever had leave and die! This isn't why I signed up." The poor girl looked close to tears.

Schumacher couldn't hide her pity. "Why did you sign up?"

"I wanted to belong. And, well, more importantly, to help."

 **xxx**

It didn't take long to realize that Schumacher and Crawford were still in the command room, so Tarkov sent the other two Marines, Ricardo Sastre and Linnea Niequist, to check up on them. His Helljumpers continued on down another purple corridor, just as devoid of personality as the last half dozen had been. They paused before a set of doors that seemed to be locked and waited until the others returned. Jennifer Rosche walked over to the doors and noticed a sensor-activated lock. She didn't dare use it, for it seemed to contain retinal and fingerprint scanners, and it might endanger them all if she tried to activate it. Still, it was intriguing to guess what lay beyond. A medical bay, or a storage room? "I wonder..." she mused. Without warning, though, a whirring sound chimed from the door, and it began to open. "Whoa!" she cried out, aiming an assault rifle at the entrance.

She expected to be greeted by an Elite hunting party, ready to tear her to shreds, or perhaps a pair of malevolent Hunters. The last thing she thought she'd see beyond that door was another human.

And yet, there he was: a man, dressed in crimson armor, his right hand clutching the trigger of a shotgun aimed right at her face, and his left resting on an SMG attached to the armor covering his left hip. The suit he wore was entirely metallic, and pouches of ammunition were arrayed at his waist. His shoulder attachments looked like enlarged, curvaceous H's, and they complimented the bulky, yet stylized and practical, look of the armor. The man wore a helmet, with a golden, vaguely square visor covering his face. What looked like scopes or cameras were mounted on the forehead, and Rosche could see that, like the ODSTs, every inch of this man's body was protected by a jet black undersuit, as well as the red armor over that. Said armor was pitted and scarred, a testament to the will of the soldier wearing it. However, it wasn't the armor, or the weapons, or the fact that the man didn't seem to move at all that frightened Rosche the most: it was the fact that he stood at least seven feet tall. This was unmistakably a Spartan-II. A real-life Spartan-II.

Rosche's mouth fell agape, and the Spartan moved his hands so that they carried the shotgun across his body, like most soldiers carried their weapons when not utilizing them. She then noticed three numbers on the left breastplate, stenciled in with white paint: '029'. A voice emanated from the Spartan, but it was one she'd heard before and felt relieved to hear again.

"Oh, hello, Corporal Rosche," Yossarian said coolly, as if winding up face-to-face with a legendary Spartan-II was an everyday occurrence. "How nice to see you all again. By the way, I don't think you've been introduced: this is Joshua-029."


	6. Zero-Two-Nine

**Well, well, well. SPARTAN Joshua-029, one of the most famed warriors of the Human-Covenant War, here on Endymion. But how? Read on to find out-I'll be honest, I loved writing from his perspective. As always, if you feel like commenting, don't hesitate. Enjoy!**

August 3, 2548

ONI prowler Auld Lang Syne (IX-259) in orbit over Endymion

It wasn't every day that you witnessed a world literally on fire. And yet, there it was: Endymion, a frontier world, its vast prairies and taigas replaced by ash and dust. Four days ago, it had been home to over nine million people, but one Covenant attack changed all that. The planet looked empty now. Great swaths of nature had been wiped away, and every major city on the small world was, by now, just a pile of rubble. Devoid of life. Devoid of meaning.

So why, Captain Isabelle Polis wondered rhetorically, was her ship currently there?

Of course, she knew the answer: the eighty-five man crew of the Auld Lang Syne had been tasked with shadowing the remnants of the Covenant fleet that had recently found and unsuccessfully attacked the human colony world of Cavern. It had been, in many ways, a surprising victory for humanity, and yet a very lucky one, as well. A civilian passenger shuttle had experienced a mechanical malfunction and had to drop out of Slipspace, only to be found by an armada of thirty-one Covenant ships less than an hour later. The shuttle's captain, knowing that Cavern was home to a large group of orbital refueling stations, jumped there and led the Covenant straight to the colony. If he'd been in the military, that would have been a serious breach of protocol that would've resulted in a court martial. As it was, he was only a civilian, and Cavern had been refueling a large fleet of UNSC ships ready to strike at a suspected Covenant staging ground. Despite suffering some losses, the UNSC managed to destroy twenty enemy ships, and the remaining craft bolted into Slipspace. Fearing they would return with reinforcements, the fleet's admiral ordered Polis' prowler to discreetly follow the Covenant. However, the Auld Lang Syne had stumbled upon Endymion, and it had only gotten stranger from there.

The floating debris of a few human and alien ships drifted slowly around the planet. Polis had ordered her communications crew to scan for any lifeboats, but they had found none. Instead, they had located a signal coming from the surface of the planet. At first, it was nothing more than gibberish and static, but the comms showed that it was clearly UNSC gibberish and static. "Can you boost that signal?" Polis asked her chief communications officer.

"I believe so, Captain," the dark-haired lieutenant answered. He licked his lips and set to work turning knobs and flipping switches in order to get a clearer signal. Within moments, an unknown voice was playing loud and clear for the whole bridge crew to hear.

"This is UNSC AI Yossarian, serial number YSN 2883-8, formerly attached to the UNSC Avenger. I am broadcasting to any UNSC personnel, although, regretfully, on an unsecured channel. My ship was shot down and crashed onto the Iridia Major continent with all hands lost. I was later discovered by a small contingent of UNSC Marines, and this signal is a plea for transport. The soldiers are searching for a way offworld, and I will continually transmit my location so that anyone who receives this can easily find them. I am well aware of the intended destruction of AI as per the Cole Protocol to ensure we don't fall into enemy hands. However, I implore you to hurry, and to treat these Marines not as rule-breakers, but as refugees. Thank you."

For a split second, Polis was bewildered. Then, something dawned on her: suppose the Covenant already had possession of this AI if it hadn't been terminated! A small blip on the radar appeared, and her helmsmen steered the ship down to the planet below and through the smoky atmosphere while other crewmen surveyed the scanners for enemy spacecraft. Polis stood, peering through the thick black clouds as she let sweat bead at her brow and saliva pour down her throat. She couldn't let that AI be hacked into; tortured for information. Billions would die if the Covenant horde poached it for information regarding Earth or Reach. She turned heel and marched a short distance towards the steel doors that served as the only exit from the bridge. Two ONI agents were guarding it. They were skilled warriors and imposing figures in their ink-black suits, but she needed someone infinitely more capable to recover that AI. "Hu, Yeminov. Get your asses to the cryobay, fast. You heard that AI: we need to get it back. To do that, I'm gonna need a Spartan." The two men nodded curtly and walked out the doors, down the hallway and towards a living legend.

 **xxx**

For the first time in months, Joshua-029 was dreaming. In the suspended animation of cryosleep, dreaming usually occurred in a specifically induced state, but Joshua simply had nothing to dream about. Usually, on the rare occurrences when he did dream, he dreamt about the Covenant. He dreamt about killing them; letting their blood flow in rivers as he leads the UNSC to victory with his Spartan brothers and sisters alongside him. This time was different, though. He dreamt about his family.

He saw vague shapes and heard voices he hadn't heard in more than three decades, and yet they were instantly recognizable. Faces with obscured features darted in and out of his vision. "Joshua," they called out, "where are you? Where are you?" A man and a woman appeared, walking out of the gloom. "Joshua, where are you?" his parents cried, and he tried to reply but couldn't. The voices changed; the woman's voice turned from warm to uncaring, and the man's from welcoming to harsh. The faces, previously void, became those of Catherine Halsey and Franklin Mendez, his overseer and drill instructor, respectively, from back on Reach. He had been only six years old when he'd first seen those people, and he found that he could talk to them. "Mom? Dad?" No. He stopped himself. But these were the ones who raised him, weren't they? No, not raised. Molded. Trained. Taught. Honed. Not raised. He wasn't their child; he was their experiment. An experiment gone horribly, tragically right.

All of a sudden, he opened his eyes. The glass pane in front of him was dripping with moisture, and beyond that, to his right, he could see an ONI technician at a control panel, thawing him out. Two agents flanked the woman as she input a series of commands that lifted the door of Joshua's cryotube. The Spartan blinked a few times and rolled his shoulders before stepping out of the tube. The Auld Lang Syne's cryobay was small, with room for only ten cryotubes, five on each side, facing each other. There were no alarms, no flashing red lights, and the other ONI personnel inside the cryotubes weren't being awakened. The three people who Joshua now faced seemed calm and collected. Evidently, the ship wasn't under attack. "What's going on?" Joshua inquired, gazing down at the ONI agents.

"Captain Polis received a transmission from an AI down on the planet below," one of the agents, a shorter, blond-haired man, gulped. He could probably kill someone with his bare hands, but even he was in awe when addressing a Spartan. "As far as she's concerned, the signal is genuine, but we don't know the whereabouts of the AI. It might be in Covenant hands."

"Planet? What planet?" the red-armored Spartan asked.

"Endymion, one of the outer colonies. Apparently, it was glassed a few days ago by the ships we were after."

"They've always been faster..." the other agent, with a paler complexion and a shaved head muttered.

"Right...anyways, the captain wishes to speak with you on the bridge. Follow us." The two men left the technician and walked through a sliding door, and Joshua strode after them. They moved from one nondescript hallway to the next, but through panes of glass, Joshua could see inside some of the rooms they passed. In one, men and women were sleeping contently, while another seemed to be an empty meeting room, with a circular wooden table surrounded by chairs. The two agents stopped and turned one last corner, and Joshua followed them onto the bridge. As soon as the doors swooshed open, a black-haired woman in a white captain's uniform turned around and offered her hand.

"Petty Officer 029, it's good to see you again." The woman displayed worry in her hazel eyes as Joshua shook it.

"Captain Polis," the seven-foot-tall man acknowledged.

"I'm going to be frank with you: we have a dilemma." Polis nodded to a communications officer, who clicked a few buttons. A message played through speakers positioned throughout the bridge, and Joshua crossed his arms as he listened to it. An AI by the moniker of Yossarian was recanting how his ship was shot down and how he was found by a group of Marines. When Joshua had finished listening to the message, he stared down at the captain.

"You're afraid the Covenant have gotten to him."

Polis sighed and nodded, but was quickly distracted by something. She rushed to the large window and peered out if it. The prowler was drifting near a tall mountain range above a burning forest. Above it, dark cloud loosed bolts of lightning sporadically, and in the distance, a thin dark shape was stationed in the sky.

"That's a Covenant cruiser," Polis stated breathlessly. "Leeves?" she called to her chief communications officer. "The signal isn't..." She stopped suddenly when she saw the pursed lips and grim expression on the lieutenant's face. She opened her mouth, but words momentarily failed her.

"Cloaking is already on, ma'am," the lieutenant said. "Engines are at a minimum. I don't think they see us." True enough, the prowler was slowly moving towards the violet Covenant ship, which showed no signs of detecting the smaller human craft. Above the scorched earth, the distance closed. Ten miles, then five miles.

"Uh...Spartan? Any suggestions?" the captain asked.

Joshua surveyed the scenario for a few seconds. Obviously, he couldn't get inside the enemy craft through any conventional entrances, which meant he'd have to make his own. "I'd recommend taking the ship up. As close above the cruiser as you can without being detected or interfering with its energy shields."

"What do you have in mind?" Polis inquired as she raised a sharp eyebrow.

"Well," the super soldier replied calmly, "I'm going to need every single explosive device you have on this ship. Then, I'm going to drop them down onto the cruiser, detonate them, and see how big of a hole they make."

 **xxx**

Upon notifying the crew of Joshua's strange request, all nonessential ONI personnel on the Auld Lang Syne set to work raiding the ship's small armory for grenades, shaped explosives, rockets and mines. A few of them took to the docking bay and gathered all the explosives into 5x5x5 foot crates, which they managed to fill two of. The Spartan helped them out in this regard, and when the crates were full, he ordered the ship to open its rear doors. Everyone else had retreated to the inner workings of the ship save for him, and when the door lowered, he shoved the two crates out and watched as they fell over a hundred meters down to the hull of the large Covenant cruiser. In Joshua's hand was a detonator. With a single breath, he leapt down, whistling through the night air. His hand gripped the detonator tighter, and he waited until he was only twenty meters above the ship when he activated it. The two crates full of explosives vanished in balls of orange flame, and an oval-shaped dent appeared once the smoke had drifted away. The blast hadn't punched straight through the ship's hull, but it was a hell of a lot more vulnerable, especially against a two-ton human missile.

Joshua discarded the detonator casually as his feet slammed into the metal below, causing a man-sized chunk of the hull to careen into the upper deck below. The Spartan landed with his right knee on the ground, with his left leg and right fist supporting it. The flimsy piece of violet metal lay beneath him, and he hopped off of it after he rose to his feet. For a brief moment, he gazed up at the dark clouds above him, and at the invisible prowler he knew was still there. Then, he gripped the barrel of the shotgun magnetized to the armor on his back and shifted it comfortably, naturally, into his hands. A data feed from the ship connected with his helmet, and showed him a small blue diamond off to his left with numbers above it. That was where the AI was; that was where he needed to get to as fast as possible. He was currently in the middle of a long, narrow hallway, so he sprinted down it until it branched in another direction. Rounding another corner, he saw a creature, floating down the corridor: a pale, luminescent blue Engineer. That particular Covenant species was usually a noncombatant, but they could provide powerful energy shields to nearby Covenant. Joshua dashed over to the alien, which let out a sort of moan as it turned to face him. It held up its tentacles, but they did nothing as the slugs of the Spartan's shotgun tore through its flesh. With a second shot, the Engineer was nothing more than a pile of armor and cerulean fluid.

Joshua quickened his pace, but soon heard footsteps that weren't his own. He stopped and listened, ducking instinctively as a plasma grenade sailed over his head. Whirling around, he found himself confronted by a trio of Elites, two grimacing Jackals and a pair of methane-sucking Grunts. The seven aliens blocked the corridor. Underneath his helmet, Joshua pursed his lips: it was their funeral. The Elites fired bolts of plasma from their rifles and repeaters, and the Grunts and Jackals joined in with their pistols. To charge in with his shotgun would've been foolhardy, so the Spartan slung it over his back, where it stuck due to the magnetized clips on his armor there, and fluidly took the pins off of two grenades, hurling them underhand towards his attackers. The explosions shredded the Jackals and one Grunt to bits, and a gold-armored Elite fell back with a broken, pulpy hole in its stomach that was rapidly leaking blood. Joshua steadied himself and aimed his SMGs at the remaining Elites, both of which were wearing white Ranger-class armor. He pulled both triggers simultaneously, depleting his opponent's shields in a matter of seconds before either alien had time to reorient themselves from the grenade blasts. By that time, however, the SMG's magazines were both empty, so Joshua discarded them, set the weapons back on the armor of his hips and rushed the Elites. He reached for his shotgun and slid right between the menacing creatures, firing two blasts in the blink of an eye that caved in their chests. By the time he got to his feet, the one surviving Grunt had fled, and the two Elites were crumpling to the ground. The Spartan turned around and headed back down the corridor he had intended to travel down before the Covenant attacked him. He spied two Jackals at the end, conversing sharply to one another. His pounding footsteps caused the avian creatures to swivel their heads and shriek in alarm as he barreled past them. Joshua noticed the humming of a plasma pistol charging, so he took out his submachine guns and fired a few quick bursts at the Jackal's unprotected hands. They both flinched and exposed their bodies, and were soon filled with bullets and leaking blood. Joshua reloaded one gun at a time and set off once more.

He walked down a ramp and saw a small gathering of Grunts a ways ahead. The aliens were unarmed, but he felt like they had to be dealt with anyways. Besides, they were Covenant; they deserved no mercy. His SMG spat out small bursts that found the Grunt's heads, and all three died without Joshua having used up a single magazine. The ammo counter in his HUD showed that he still had plenty of rounds left, and he would definitely need them soon. Another vital component of the heads-up display integrated into the Spartan's MJOLNIR armor was his radar, which displayed the location of any organic creatures within a mission-dictated range of sufficient mass and categorized them into friendly, neutral or hostile units. Right now, he looked to the radar and noticed an amassing of red dots, signifying enemies, that seemed to be gathering ahead of him.

Joshua took out his shotgun and crept forward, letting a motion-activated door fling open as he drew close. Ahead was a vehicle storage bay, packed with unmanned Wraiths and Revenants. Hiding among the vehicles was a force of dozens of Covenant forces, including a pair of Hunters. All at once, a barrage of plasma flew towards the bewildered Spartan-II. Bolts of multicolored energy slammed into his armor, causing his shields to flare a bright gold. He rushed to the right, parallel to the walls, and fired from his SMGs.

 _This_ was the part of combat he loved.

He fell to the ground and rolled to avoid an assault cannon barrage from the Hunters, springing to his feet behind a Wraith. With a few precise shots, two Grunts fell in pools of blue blood. One Elite launched a plasma grenade towards the Wraith, so Joshua clambered up and over the carapace of the tank, supporting his sliding body with one arm while he fired away with the SMG in the other. A Jackal clutched its chest and toppled over, and Joshua ran past its corpse. He dashed between the Hunters, timing it so their green bolts of plasma tore into each other instead of him. He could hear the malicious cries of Covenant behind him, and felt a few beams of plasma slam into his back, but he ignored it all, focusing solely on his objective: getting to the AI at any cost.

The Spartan descended another short ramp, checked his visor for a moment to see which direction the AI was, and continued that way. He paused as a door to his left activated and opened, and he peered inside. The walls were lined with strange, cylindrical tubes, lined with some kind of cloth, and illuminated by soft, almost calming purple lights. Judging by their size, Joshua assumed they were beds for the Elites. He quickly scanned the area for hostiles and, seeing none, continued further into the room. A whirring sound alerted him to the opposite door, some twenty meters away, and he pointed his SMG towards it.

A pair of Engineers bobbed through the air towards him, seemingly unbeknownst-or simply not caring-that he was there. For a moment, Joshua contemplated letting them pass, but then he double-checked the marker on his HUD: the AI's data chip was just a few meters away, clutched in the tentacle of one of the Engineers. The Spartan took out his shotgun and, just as the creatures brushed past him, let loose with two quick shots, decapitating both of the noncombatant aliens and sending their bodies crashing to the ground. Wiping a small amount of the Engineers' blood off his visor, Joshua then kneeled down, reattached the gun to his back, and scoured the pulpy mess for the data chip. "There we go," he said softly, once he'd found it.

A holographic image sputtered to life in the soldier's palm, forming the image of a fighter pilot from centuries past. Even it was in awe of seeing Joshua. "Well, I'll be. A Spartan. I'm UNSC AI YSN-2883-8. You can call me-"

"Yossarian. I know." Joshua was impatient, and he could hear the shouts of Covenant hurrying towards him. "There's a Prowler in the atmosphere that received your distress signal. Where are those Marines you said were with you?"

The AI was silent, mouth wide, head shaking slightly. "I believe...that they're on this ship."

"Fantastic," the Petty Officer mused sarcastically. He heard a door slide open behind him and swiveled around to see a pair of Skirmishers, flanked by an Elite, very much surprised to see him there. In one fluid motion, he took out his SMGs and fired a single round into each of the Skirmisher's heads. Before they had hit the deck, his hand was around the Elite Minor's throat, squeezing it with all his strength. As the reptilian alien slumped to the ground, it's executor ran back into the Sangheili bedroom, picked Yossarian's chip up and stuffed it into a storage compartment on his hip, and went through the set of doors the Engineers had come from and down another hallway.

He shifted his shotgun into a ready position as he neared a door. "The Covenant took me through here," Yossarian stated from Joshua's hip. "It's some kind of storage compartment." True enough, the door opened to reveal a smallish room full of crates. Weapons, tech, foodstuffs; they were all kept in the same room. Joshua didn't really bother surveying it too much, however: the door in front of him chimed and started to open. He held the shotgun in one hand and kept the other on the hilt of an SMG, just in case. He expected to find a group of Covenant, ready to attack him.

He did not expect to find a group of weary, shocked Marines and ODSTs, including one Helljumper with green armor details aiming an assault rifle directly at him.

"Oh, hello, Corporal Rosche," Yossarian's voice said, emanating from Joshua's storage compartment. "How nice to see you all again. By the way, I don't think you've been introduced: this is Joshua-029."

 **xxx**

"Oh my God," Rosche breathed. "A Spartan. We're saved!" She couldn't help but smile. They finally had a fighting chance. She removed her helmet and stuck out her hand. "Corporal Jennifer Rosche, Omega Two-Seven. It's an honor."

Joshua (why did that have to be his name? As if she had to be reminded of it further...) hesitated for a second before returning the handshake, albeit very cautiously. "Who's in charge here?"

"I am, Spartan," Tarkov said. "Second Lieutenant Sergei Tarkov. How can we help you?"

SPARTAN-029 saluted. "Sir, the AI Yossarian has been recovered. There's a Prowler that I could contact, but not here. Not inside the Covenant cruiser. Do you have a transport of any kind to get out of here?"

"We had a Phantom," Jackson DeWitt stated. "But we can't go back right now; there were some Army personnel who boarded with us. They were looking for a slipspace-capable ship. We can't leave them behind!"

"That complicates things..." Joshua murmured. "New strategy. We rescue the Army troops and find a new ship to escape on. With luck, we'll lose any Covenant pursuers long enough for the Auld Lang Syne to pick us up." He gripped his M90 tighter and looked around at the assortment of men and women assembled before him. "Any questions?"

 **xxx**

Another burst of the Spartan's shotgun sent a Grunt flying backwards, into a wall. Joshua stepped over its corpse, rounded a corner and lifted up a fist, signaling the Marines to stop. Just as he did, a long, golden beam erupted in front of him, burning the wall to the Spartan's left. Even from his position three meters behind the legendary soldier, Oscar Cortez could feel the heat from the focus rifle. The scarlet-clad warrior motioned for Washington to give him her DMR, which she did without hesitation. Even as Joshua peered around the corner and let loose a few rounds, killing the Jackal assaulting their position, Cortez felt a strange sense of foreboding. Having a Spartan on this operation made it a lot easier, but...Spartans weren't immortal, like everyone seemed to assume they were. Cortez knew that from experience.

He thought, briefly, about the last time he'd seen a SPARTAN-II. Most Helljumpers held some degree of animosity towards them, due to an incident which had occurred just as the war against the Covenant had began. According to widely-spread reports, an unarmored Spartan was confronted by a group of four ODSTs after he forgot to replace a safety pin in a weight machine, nearly crushing the Helljumper who next used it to death. The four men had assaulted the Spartan in retaliation, but an officer had apparently wanted to see just how well Spartans could fight, and had ordered them to the ring to spar.

Within seconds, two of the ODSTs were dead and the others were too wounded to ever fight again.

At first, he'd felt the same hatred towards Spartan-IIs when he and his fireteam were introduced to Calypso-141 back in 2546. But he had shoved those feelings aside in order to complete their mission: the assassination of a Covenant Prophet on the world of Heian.

It hadn't started out well: one of his team had died before they'd even hit the planet's surface. Eventually, though, the Prophet was killed, and the ODSTs and Spartan were picked up by a Pelican and brought back to their destroyer, the UNSC Kronstadt.

Regrettably, the Spartan left Heian in a body bag. A Brute chieftain had snuck up on them and stabbed her in the throat with a knife as she tried to shield an ODST from harm. She'd bled out moments before the Helljumpers completed the mission.

That event gave Cortez and the other two survivors infinitely more respect for the Spartan-IIs, but it also served as a mortifying lesson in reality: Spartans weren't invincible. They were still human like everyone else in the UNSC, and they could be killed like any normal soldier. The Office of Naval Intelligence had, understandably, been most displeased with some Helljumpers finding out about that fact, perhaps even more so than with the fact that Calypso had died during the operation. Cortez and the other survivors were split up and reassigned to other squads in the far corners of the galaxy. They were barred from ever communicating with each other again, and if any of them let slip that they'd seen a Spartan die, the punishment, according to the ONI operative who had debriefed them after their return to the Kronstadt, would be "worse than death itself." So the three ODSTs went about their lives, not knowing if the others were still alive or fighting, and forbidden from even mentioning the word 'Spartan' to anybody else, let alone being assigned to another mission with one.

So Oscar Cortez found it quite a shock that he was now following one throughout the hallways of a Covenant cruiser. Something in the back of his mind told him that ONI had a nasty surprise awaiting him if he ever got back to Earth.

 **xxx**

The Covenant had tried numerous times to lock doors in front of them to prevent their escape, but Joshua had planned ahead. He'd implanted Yossarian into what he'd correctly assumed to be some sort of computer terminal, and had the AI redirect a subroutine of himself into monitoring the Covenant. After the Spartan had pulled the 'main' AI out of the terminal, this subroutine easily reopened any doors the Covenant attempted to close and, during one harrowing moment it had reported to Joshua alone, out of fear the other humans would be scared witless, that it had prevented the aliens from depressurizing the room the Marines had been traveling through, which would have asphyxiated them in seconds.

The subroutine also helped Joshua to lead the group of Marines down corridors with minimal Covenant resistance. Only a few times did he have to draw arms and repel any assailants that dared to get close to them, and, luckily, he was able to do so without a single Marine getting wounded, save for one ODST who was hit in the arm by a plasma rifle burst.

They soon made it to a large steel door that the AI noted was the entrance to the hanger bay...and that there appeared to be a firefight going on inside. Joshua motioned for the others to stay back before he charged in, wielding a battle rifle and an assault rifle he'd traded the shotgun and his SMGs for. The first thing he saw was a very surprised-looking Elite, which he swatted in the jaw with the butt of his assault rifle before finishing it off with a few well-placed bullets to the throat. Returning to a combat stance, he surveyed the room. Numerous Covenant were turning to face him, but he also saw a man in beige fatigues scrambling into a Phantom dropship; that had to be one of the embattled soldiers. Joshua spied a pair of Grunts waddling towards the Phantom with fuel rod cannons primed to fire, so he unslung the BR and took them out, although doing so allowed a vicious Elite General to come uncomfortably close. It swung an energy sword at him, but the agile Spartan easily backstepped the lunge, and countered by emptying the rifle's magazine into the Elite's armor. It roared and swung again; this time, Joshua ducked and thrust his body at the alien, leading with his shoulder and knocking it off-balance. A few globs of plasma impacted onto his MJOLNIR suit as he tried to reload, but thankfully its energy shielding absorbed most of the blows. He primed a grenade and casually tossed it at the alien at his feet before leaping over it and charging straight at the remaining enemy troops, firing his AR as he dashed forwards. The sickening cry from behind him confirmed that the grenade had finished off the General.

A handful of Drones, Grunts and Jackals fell under the Spartan's onslaught. He reached the bay door of the Phantom and knocked on it, once again shrugging off small-arms fire. Even as he did, the Marines charged towards the few remaining Covenant and eliminated them by this attack from the rear. The Phantom's door lowered, and Joshua ushered the soldiers inside.

Hearing a familiar, unexpected noise, the Spartan pivoted around and froze. One Helljumper, with green armor adornments, was jogging towards him still, desperately sprinting to reach the Phantom. Beyond her, however, two pairs of Hunters had appeared, and four beams of plasma were streaming through the air right towards her. He could order her to duck-but what if she turned around in order to see why? He couldn't risk that. In only a matter of seconds, he had bounded up to her, lifted her by the waist, and flung her towards the Phantom. One of the plasma blasts hit him square in the back, and another slammed into his left leg; if he wasn't wearing MJOLNIR, he would've been torn to shreds. Joshua reached into the storage compartment and pulled out Yossarian's data chip, flinging it at the bewildered ODST. Just as she barely got hold of it, yet another bolt slammed into Joshua's back. He heard the cries of astonishment from the woman he'd saved, and the LT was ordering him to get on. "Go!" he called to the Marines, ignoring their outbursts. "Go, go, go!"

 **Xxx**

SPARTAN-029 got up tenderly, as if he had actually been wounded. Jennifer Rosche watched in awe as he nodded, like nothing had happened, at their captured Phantom, readied his battle rifle, and ran headfirst, oblivious to the bolts of plasma hurtling towards him, at the Hunters. The door suddenly closed, even as she grasped at it, desperately trying to reach out and save the man who'd saved her, but close it did, and she was left with only the other Marines and her increasingly terrifying thoughts.

The Marines had been quite surprised to find only a single soldier onboard the dropship. Isamu Ban, the one DeWitt and the late Cross had stated was a funny, sarcastic man, had been the sole, nervous wreck of an occupant. As the autopiloted ship flew above the cruiser, in order to get to the hanger bay they had left the poor pilot Quentin Hurthes in, Tarkov kneeled before him, pressing Ban for answers. "Where's Major Goodwin?" he'd inquired with more than a hint of urgency.

"Dead, gone, just like them all," the Army soldier had fearfully replied. "He took a couple overcharged plasma rounds to the chest, then he kept getting shot at until he fell." Ban gulped sharply and wiped his eyes. "They're all gone," he sobbed.

"Explain," the no-nonsense LT ordered.

"What is there to explain?" Ban lashed out. "It was a bloodbath from the get-go. There were too many of them for us to handle in the hanger, and more and more just kept coming. I was lucky to find a place to hide." Washington kneeled down and gently put a hand on the specialist's shoulder.

The Phantom breached the forcefield of the other hangar bay, hovering ominously above a group of Elites and Skirmishers who appeared to be searching for any humans. Luckily, the Phantom they'd left Hurthes in was untouched. On Tarkov's orders, the Marines lowered the hatches and fired down upon the aliens, but they didn't catch them unawares. The Covenant soldiers returned fire, scorching the bottom of the Phantom, but they weren't in any position to actually hit their attackers. As the Phantom lowered itself to barely a foot above the ground, the hatches lowered on another one, parked on the other side of the hanger. Hurthes appeared, looking visibly frightened, and cautiously made his way past the bodies of the Covenant. The Marines urged him to quicken his pace, so he started to run.

A whirring sound pierced the silence of the hanger, and a door clacked open to the far left of the Marines' Phantom, revealing a pair of Elites. One of them, adorned in red armor, warbled something to its comrade, and they assaulted the now-frantic Hurthes with green carbine bolts. He weaved around, doing his best to avoid them, and the Marines with long-range weapons provided covering fire.

Their efforts were in vain: a carbine round struck Hurthes in the right shoulder, then two more hit his neck, and another slammed into his back. He lurched like a grotesque mannequin and slid a small distance across the floor, lying eerily still halfway between the two dropships. The Sangheili snarled with pride and turned their guns to focus on the ship full of humans.

The door behind them, however, slid apart, to reveal a figure in red armor. Joshua-029 reached up, one hand on the butt and the other on the barrel of an assault rifle, and jammed it with one fluid motion across the neck of the an Elite, choking it against his armor. As the other alien started to turn around in utter disbelief, Joshua removed his hand from the barrel, discarding the red-armored Elite Major, and slammed the rifle with all his might at the split-jaw's ugly face. Such a blow caused the Sangheili to reel to the metallic floor in pain, and it loosened its grip on its carbine. Joshua snatched it up with his free hand and turned both weapons on the aliens lying helplessly at his feet. Without a moment's hesitation, he depleted their shields and filled their bodies with plasma and lead. Joshua relocated both weapons-his battle rifle was strangely absent-to the back of his armor and made his way at best speed towards the Marines. Something was off, though: he was limping. He had just passed Hurthes' corpse, stealing a forlorn glance at it, when the doors he had entered through opened again, revealing a trio of very angry Hunters. Joshua didn't need to look back; he hustled over to the Phantom, stepped onto it with the help of Rosche and DeWitt, and yelled for someone to pilot it out of the cruiser.

Rosche hurried to the cockpit, implanted Yossarian, and told him to get the ship back to the mountain range they'd left the civilians at.

"I can certainly do that," the AI retorted, "but it wouldn't necessarily be the best idea right now."

"Why the hell not?" an irritated Tarkov demanded of the tiny green figure.

"Because there's a flight of Banshees on our tail," Yossarian pointed out as he materialized a display of said Covenant aircraft on the monitors. "And we don't have the maneuverability to escape them."

"So what you're saying is...we're screwed."

The AI offered a sad, sympathetic smile as the first plasma bolts started to hit the Phantom's hull.


	7. The Calm Before a Storm

**Here we go, everyone. The third-to-last chapter. Will Joshua lead the soldiers to safety? And what plans do the Covenant have to deal with him? The battle for Endymion is all but finished-only one last obstacle remains: the Demon.**

Spartans never die.

It wasn't just a saying; it was a policy, albeit a false one. Spartans were too highly regarded and steeped in near-mythic legend for it to leak out to the populous that they were merely flesh and blood. Joshua thought about that directive as he slumped to the floor of the Phantom, with crumpled armor and a busted leg. He'd hate to prove it false. Biofoam emitters in his armor were doing their best to repair the damage, but the Spartan was still exhausted. That was something no amount of medical aid could remedy.

Joshua sighed, a deflection in his voice marking his pain. He wearily reached up and, with a short click, took his helmet off and set it down next to him. The servicemen and servicewomen around him, despite the soft pitter-patter of plasma hitting the thick hull of the dropship, focused exclusively on him. His scarred, worried face would be considered pleasing to some of the women, with dark brown hair in a buzzcut, and cerulean eyes. The corpsman-IFF tags had earlier identified her as one Private Abigail Crawford-bent down in front of him and looked him over. "You're wounded," she stated sorrowfully, "but I can't patch you up until we're out of danger."

"I appreciate the offer, Private," Joshua replied, which he noted elicited a slight smile from the young woman. "But I need you-all of you," he said, raising his voice, "to focus on the mission ahead. My safety isn't a priority."

"Than what the hell is?" an ODST with white armor detailing, identified as Master Sergeant Oscar Cortez, snapped at him. "You're a goddamned Spartan. You're too valuable to die." He drew a few uneasy looks from his fellow Marines.

Joshua sighed. He hated to be reminded about his own unnatural superiority. He had never had a choice in the matter; it was simply his duty now to do all he could to protect humanity. He struggled to his feet, helped up by the medic, and managed to take a single step before an incredible explosion threw him to the ground. He felt the Phantom dip a few meters, and he coughed violently. Luckily, there wasn't any blood in his spittle. Joshua reached for his helmet and snapped it back on.

"What's our status?" he heard Crawford ask. The ODST lieutenant, looking even more grave than usual, stepped out from the cockpit to answer her.

"We're going down." Tarkov screamed to be heard over the groaning metallic parts of the ship that were slowly falling off. A splintering crack was heard, and one of the fins protruding from the rear of the Phantom snapped off as it was barraged by plasma fire. Another green charge from a Banshee struck the purloined Covenant ship, and a third narrowly missed. The craft was now losing altitude at a worrying rate. "Brace for impact," Tarkov warned. His subordinates abased themselves, staying low to the ground as the Phantom skimmed the treetops before careening through a few thick trucks, sliding to a stop after a violent crash landing. The Banshees following the ship broke off and returned to the cruiser. The plume of smoke, and the scar the wreck had caused as it slammed through the forest, marked its location clearer than any circling fightercraft ever could. With a groan, Joshua picked himself up and shook the shoulder of the nearest Marine. "Corporal Sastre?" he asked. The man stirred and licked his lips. "Corporal, get up. We need to move."

"Wh-Spartan?" Sastre got to his knees and shook his head. Crawford, Niequist, Ban, DeWitt, Cortez, Washington and Schumacher slowly got around, as well. Joshua stepped over them to reach the cockpit, opening it to reveal Tarkov and Rosche, both of whom were luckily still alive. The holographic figure of Yossarian was shimmering slightly in its spot at the control panel-his avatar seemed almost nervous.

"It's a good thing you all have those helmets," the AI quipped, smirking in a lighthearted manner upon seeing Tarkov, who notably did not give a helmet, growl at him. He watched as Joshua helped Rosche to her feet, only to have said Spartan yank him out of the controls moments later.

"Lieutenant Tarkov," Joshua inquired, "do you remember where you left those civilians?" He had heard some of the troops talking about some locals they'd left behind while he was leading them to the hanger bay. Tarkov hesitated, apparently unsure.

"I do," Rosche responded. "We left some food and water with them, and some medical supplies, too."

"That's where we need to go, then." Joshua reached around his back and felt for the carbine he had pilfered from the Elite that had killed that Marine pilot. He gripped at the barrel of the assault rifle, as well, only to find it had broken apart in the crash. How unfortunate. "Lead the way; we can't stay here long. The Covenant will send ships after us."

"I..." The AI paused in his interjection. That was unusual, to say the least. "I have a solution. They can't track us if I'm not around for them to hone onto."

"What are you suggesting?" Tarkov asked, turning to face the tiny green figure that had illuminated itself in Joshua's hand.

"You don't need me anymore," Yossarian stated with a hint of melancholy. "The Covenant can only find you easily if they can still track me. I need you to destroy me."

"Are you sure it'll work?" Joshua questioned.

"Positive."

"You're a very young AI..." Rosche noted, crossing her arms.

"I was activated on July 13, 2547." Noticing a look of pain flash over the woman's face, Yossarian frowned. "I'm sorry, Jennifer. I understand that your homeworld Skopje fell around that time."

"Yeah, well..." the Helljumper sighed. "It's not your fault. I'm sorry we have to do all of this now."

Yossarian gazed up at Joshua. "Goodbye, SPARTAN-029. Keep them safe, won't you?"

The man in red armor hesitated. He found it difficult to end the AI's existence, which surprised him. He'd killed thousands of humans and aliens...but none of them had really been as innocent, or the act so sudden, or his own feelings so ridden with guilt. Yossarian had wanted nothing more than to help humanity, and to rescue the people trapped on this world, and now Joshua had to destroy him. "Of course," he whispered.

He clenched his fist, crushing the AI's chip, hearing metal snap and electricity crackle, and feeling sharp pricks in his palm. He opened his fist and let the shards of Yossarian fall to the ground.

Then, for good measure, he stomped them to dust with his armored boot.

 **xxx**

The elderly and venerable, but no less fearsome, Jiralhanae Chieftain Velorus was proud of his nephew. Unlike the Sangheili and their ridiculous obsession with bloodlines and genealogy, the Jiralhanae were more concerned with the strength and might of a leader rather than who their ancestors were. Velorus fully expected that one of his packmates would eventually challenge him for his position of leadership, and he secretly hoped that his nephew would be the one to rise up to the task. Karkavus was resourceful and powerful; he would make a fine Chieftain.

He also acted as a sort of liaison between Velorus' ship, the Time for Faithful Reflection, and the cruisers under Shipmaster Lan 'Moramee's command. The elder Jiralhanae was pleased when his nephew entered the bridge of the Reflection with an interesting report. "Uncle, my Chieftain," the gold-armored young warrior said as he took a knee before the seat of Velorus. "The Blessed Canticle is under siege by a group of humans."

Velorus raised an eyebrow. His amber fur rustled as he stood up, barking orders at a communications officer to establish contact with 'Moramee. "What was the situation when you left, nephew?"

"A small mob of the unholy creatures had barged into the hangar bay and began killing the Sangheili. My delegates and I were lucky to escape. As far as I know, 'Moramee is dead."

"We shall see." The Chieftain had already ordered his bridge crew to get to the Blessed Canticle's location at best speed. His comms officer Prellus (an intelligent Jiralhanae, but too scrawny to ever be Velorus' successor) worked diligently to establish an uplink with the Sangheili ship. After several tense minutes, a holographic visage of the Shipmaster blinked to life from a hologram emitter next to the command chair. He seemed even more irate than usual, and had his left fist wrapped around the neck of a limp human soldier, with a neat hole cleaved through the imp's reflective face covering.

"I killed this scum myself," he muttered to the Jiralhanae. He turned to face the human and dropped its corpse, which fell out of view. Returning his angry gaze to Velorus, he continued. "It and twenty of its unworthy species are dead at the hands of my warriors."

Velorus was unimpressed. He refused to offer a verbal response, merely huffing in acknowledgement.

"They have repaid that toll tenfold! And do you know why?" the Sangheili yelled in frustration. Velorus saw Karkavus open his mouth to utter a witty response about the incompetence of the Shipmaster's kind, but 'Moramee's next words caused him to shut his mouth.

"Because they have a Demon with them."

Uncle and nephew shared a worried glance. A Demon? One of the vicious, ruinous, allegedly immortal soldiers rumored to have been bred by the humans via hellish and infernal methods? It was said that the creatures could kill thousands of Covenant without breaking a sweat. One Sangheili, then a Major by the name of Thel 'Lodamee, had sworn to the noble Hierarchs-the Prophets of Truth, Mercy and Regret-that he had killed one of the Demons four years previously. When he had failed to provide evidence-despite claiming the helmet he had taken from the Demon had been in another part of the assault carrier he was serving on that, which was separated from the experimental ship during a battle-he was executed in front of millions. Such was the proper punishment for one who lied to the Prophets, at least according to Velorus.

Still, he couldn't be afraid. No one became Chieftain by backing away from conflict. "Bah!" Velorus said. "We will squash this Demon like a bug."

"Hah! I doubt it. But good luck trying," the Shipmaster sneered sarcastically. His hologram fizzled out of existence.

Karkavus glanced at his uncle. "I will find this insignificant human and destroy it myself, Demon or not," he said eagerly. "After all, we can always track the signal left by that ancillia."

"Of course," the elder Jiralhanae mused. "Very well. Go forth and-"

"Chieftain! That signal-it's gone!"

Velorus walked over to Prellus and peered at the screen over his shoulder. Sure enough, the signal they'd been tracking had inexplicably vanished. "Can you trace its last known location?"

"Yes," the cobalt-armored comms officer confirmed after some hesitation. "But we can no longer discern its movement."

"I shall find them," Karkavus boasted. "I won't fail you, Chieftain."

"Be careful, young one," Velorus warned. "You are going against a Demon."

"And I shall slay it, and the Prophets will shower us with praise."

 **xxx**

Karkavus strode into one of the starboard hangars of the Reflection, flanked by a well-armed and bloodthirsty group of Jiralhanae, Unggoy, Yanme'e and Kig-Yar. He had gone from room to room, gathering anyone brave enough to follow him, and they were now ready to leave. He ran a thick finger over the wicked blade at the end of his grenade launcher. Weaponry like it had been honed on Doisac and the surrounding colonies for centuries; Jiralhanae favored sharp daggers and spikes over more traditional plasma-based weapons.

Karkavus stepped into a Phantom and barked an order to the pilots to take off. It was filled to capacity with four dozen Covenant warriors, just like each of the other five Phantoms that were cleared to leave the cruiser. The scent and sounds of nervous Unggoy, anxious Jiralhanae Minors and buzzing, droning Yanme'e elated his senses. Karkavus truly felt alive, and ready to make his uncle proud.

This was the part of warfare he liked the most. Not the fighting, but the thrill of the hunt. When he had killed that giant silver reptile before a filthy human had stolen his ship, he had felt a sense of regret. He realized that he would have much preferred to track the beast down before dispatching it.

Oh, well. That was nature. You couldn't pick and choose what battles you faced there. But humans weren't animals...they would be prepared. They would fight their hardest, although, even with a Demon at their side, Karkavus knew it would prove futile.

They might not be animals, but they could still be slaughtered like them.

 **xxx**

Cortez muttered a curse as his boot sloshed into a patch of thick mud. In response, Tarkov shot him a glance and held a finger up to his lips. The other Helljumper rolled his eyes and continued marching. His lieutenant ignored his insolence-in these conditions, who could blame him?-and turned to look at the slow procession of men and women trudging through the forest behind them. Stealth was the top priority, but the Spartan, even at nighttime, with his red armor, stood out like a sore thumb. To his credit, he was staying a fair distance away from the rest of the group. Rosche had taken point, with the other Marines and Ban sticking close behind her. They were making steady progress towards the spot where they'd left the civilians and their supplies, but it had been easily three hours since they'd left the wreck of that Phantom. Too often, they'd had to hunker down and let the darkness cover them as they heard the sound of a Covenant ship flying overhead.

It was dawn now, though. The star that warmed the solar system was cresting above the hills, and Tarkov was tired of trudging through swamp and woodlands. He felt uneasy; Endymion was largely uninhabited, and predators both large and small prowled the innumerable uncultivated forests. Maybe they were afraid of the Covenant cruiser positioned miles away, or by the fact that there were so many humans in the group. Whatever the case, he was surprised that they weren't being stalked. No matter; the Spartan would protect them.

Wherever the Covenant might be, they hadn't found the humans just yet. Tarkov could at least be thankful of that. He'd sent his heavily-armed ODSTs to scout out the area up ahead, while Schumacher, Crawford, Ban, Sastre and Niequist stuck close by him. They huddled together, walking slowly forward, through thick shrubbery and over a swiftly-flowing river.

Tarkov estimated that they were only a short distance away from the civilians when Cortez burst through a gap in the tree line. He looked utterly shellshocked. "Lieutenant?" his voice wobbled. "Come here, please. The rest of you might want to keep away." Tarkov marched behind him a hundred meters or so until they came about a small clearing. He had a bad feeling in the pit if his stomach.

The first thing he noticed once he arrived was all the blood.

It was splashed across the trees, and small puddles were seeping into the ground. Monique Washington was on her knees in a small pool of it, gazing helplessly-and nautiously-at the broken body of a little girl. The child had had her stomach ripped out, and the bodies surrounded hers were in no better shape. A dark-skinned, bald corpse, lying face-down in some bushes to Tarkov's immediate right, had a leg torn from its socket. Seven other bodies, including that of a Marine, were equally slashed apart. The crates of food, with their contents littering the ground, had been apparently been torn into by something of immense strength. Or perhaps not just one thing: heaped about the bodies of the humans were those of four brown-furred, bulbous-eyed mammals that looked like dogs crossed with rats, but each the size of a pig. They all had vicious, blood-stained claws and dagger-like teeth. It wouldn't take a detective to comprehend that these animals had ravaged the small group of humans. Tarkov bent down and looked over the body of one of the creatures, trying to determine how it had perished. Streams of bright red blood poured over the animal's snout, revealing a trio of bullet holes in the forehead. "Small-arms fire…" the lieutenant murmured. He stood up and wiped his hands on his uniform. Behind him, Cortez and Rosche were looking at the carnage with shocked faces, and trying unsuccessfully not to vomit.

"We...ugh, we should have never left them alone," Rosche stated solemnly. Tarkov couldn't help but agree. However, it appeared as though the band of dissenters that had abandoned the Phantom and fled into the woods had arrived to help the civilians when they'd come under attack. Fruitlessly, it seemed. "These...these deserters came back to help. I wonder why."

"There were five of them, though…" Cortez said thoughtfully. He checked over each of the bloody corpses, although he hated going near Washington. She was an absolute wreck, kneeling in the muck, her helmet cast aside, next to the body of the small girl. DeWitt was comforting her, holding her close. Both of them were crying. Wash noticed him staring, which prompted her to wipe her nose.

"Her-her name was Amira," she whispered, her voice raspy. "She had some friends, all her neighbors, and-and she-she loved to play softball with them." The Helljumper broke into another fit of tears as DeWitt patted her back. "That's all she ever wanted, to have fun. She was so afraid. She told me that." By now, Cortez was squatting next to the body. It looked so small, now that he really had a chance to observe it.

"You really got close to her, huh?" he asked softly.

Washington nodded. "She reminded me of all the kids I used to babysit when I was younger. I was so good with children, I really was. They all used to love hanging out with me. I would help them with their schoolwork, and play games with them. About a dozen kids who utterly adored me, and I adored them."

"And what happened to them?" Cortez said sadly. He braced himself for the inevitable.

"The Covenant killed them all," Washington breathed, her whole body quivering.

Cortez looked up, about to mutter an apology, when he spied something moving in the forest. He motioned to DeWitt and Washington, ordering them to stay put. He drew his assault rifle and took a few hesitant steps toward the location where he could've sworn he'd seen something move. Tarkov and Rosche each had their weapons drawn and steadily maneuvered around the corpses littering the forest floor within a few seconds, joining their comrade at the edge of the clearing. The trio shoved through the thick foliage until they were close enough to see their target clearly: a dirty, disheveled Marine, one Cortez recognized. "Hong?" he asked. The woman, who appeared to be carrying some kind of rucksack, dropped it and gazed at them in horror. She turned around and bolted, but tripped and careened to the dirt. The ODSTs quickly caught up to her, only to find her screaming in fear.

"Get away, get away!" she cried. The Helljumpers regarded her with interest, looking amongst themselves, silently deciding what needed to be done with her. "I tried to save them," Hong blubbered. "We all did, b-but those m-monsters-"

"Ssshhh," Rosche murmured as she removed her helmet. "We know. You did all you could." She wheeled around at the sound of something coming through the underbrush, but it was simply the rest of the stranded humans, all visibly in shock of having witnessed the corpses of the people they'd failed to protect.

Mary Hong got to her feet and looked at the group. "Goodwin? Turay? Gerencer?" Lieutenant Tarkov shook his head sadly as he told her how so many of them had perished. Then he told her of their new ally, and she didn't believe him at all.

One look at the ally, as Joshua strode into the clearing, glancing down at the bodies in an analytical manner, erased Hong's doubt. She bounded over to Joshua and looked him over with awe. Notably, Crawford saw Hong and attempted to greet her, but Schumacher put her hand out in front of the younger woman's path, as if forbidding her from making contact with the deserter. For her part, it appeared Hong didn't care to talk to her former squadmates.

"Well, I'll be. It's a Spartan."

 **xxx**

Joshua rolled his eyes. Yet another Marine gushing over his legacy as a Spartan; not something he wanted. There was a mission at hand, and he needed to see it through. "Who are you?" he inquired, crossing his arms.

"That's Mary Hong," the redheaded Gunnery Sergeant Schumacher stated venomously. "She went AWOL when the going got tough, instead of fighting and dying like the rest of us." Hong swiveled around to face the other woman. Her brow was furrowed and her fists were clenched.

"Don't talk to me like tha-"

"Oh, shut up." Schumacher pointed an accusatory finger at Hong. "You abandoned us, plain and simple. You chose to run away in the vain hope you'd survive. Tom and Gordon are dead, and you weren't even there."

Joshua had spent his life around warriors, and he knew that there'd be conflict between these two. The Spartan took a pair of wide steps and shoved them apart. "Easy there...easy," he ordered, glancing from one angry face to the other. Their fellow servicemen looked on cautiously, forming a loose semicircle at a safe distance. None of them stayed too close to the bodies and pools of blood, and those that were backed away quickly. "Now, both of you need to calm down." He took a stride away from the pair, watching them carefully. "I need to make contact with the Auld Lang Syne," he continued, once he was sure they wouldn't go for each other's throats again. "If we can find a suitable landing zone, I'll contact it and have us picked up. The only problem is that the Covenant might be able to track my transmissions."

"We should focus on finding a place for it to land first, then," Tarkov stated. He shifted uncomfortably, and some of the troops groaned and rubbed their legs. "Quit your whining, we'll be offworld before you know it," he barked sternly. Joshua saw through his pretense of focus, though; Tarkov was disgusted at the corpses strewn around him. He probably wanted to bury them out of a sense of decency, but didn't want to have to dig through all the blood and guts. It did seem like a daunting task...but that's what Spartans were trained to accomplish.

"You all go on," Joshua told them, crossing his arms. "Look for a large, open clearing. I'll catch up to you." As the servicemen nodded, wished him luck, and walked into the forest, he noticed Tarkov breathing a sigh of relief. He seemed more composed-if not burying bloody corpses enabled the lieutenant to lead more effectively, Joshua would gladly take the dirty job for himself. He was surprised none of them had taken any food or medical supplies from the crates. He checked them over, and found that there was still ample material and nutrients untouched by those beasts, so he took some. The Spartan dug a small hole a good distance away from the bodies and dropped a grenade into it. The plasma grenade exploded-making less of a noise than a frag-and Joshua set to work lifting up the torn-apart bodies and dumping them in the crater it created. As he was carrying the cadaver of one black-haired woman, an arm fell off of her, plopping to the ground silently. Joshua frowned, looking into the glazed-over eyes of the civilian. Her face was untouched save for a few drops of blood, which made the task even more unsettling. The fact that these people hadn't even died at the hands of the Covenant made him ponder. Once he had placed all the chewed, torn, eviscerated masses of flesh inside the hole he'd made, he covered it up with foliage and dirt. The Spartan held his hands up in front of him, uttering a barely audible grunt of acknowledgement when he saw that his forearms were covered in all matters of mud and visceral debris.

'Better me than any of the others,' Joshua thought. He remembered that the group had crossed a river earlier, so he headed in that direction in order to cleanse his armor, as well as his mind.

 **xxx**

A great covering of clouds blanketed the sky, and a torrent of rain poured down onto the forest. It had started as a light drizzle, but grew heavier as time went on. It was in these conditions that the startled human troops were rejoined by their enigmatic comrade. The Spartan had just...appeared, out of nowhere, asking if they'd found a suitable clearing yet. After his fellow soldiers regained their composure, they explained that they didn't know where to look, try as they might. "Unfortunate," Joshua had muttered, before slipping off into the gloom to continue the search. Later that day, he'd ordered them to halt their march. The storm had picked up considerably, and he notified them that it would be fruitless to keep looking for a place large enough for the Auld Lang Syne to land. The dense canopy above them provided a light respite from the torrential downfall, and they managed to huddle underneath a small bluff jutting out from the ground. It would do little to keep them warm or dry, but it was better than nothing. The Spartan handed out the few rations he'd managed to recover. Everyone took a minuscule portion except for Mary Hong, who didn't seem like she wanted anything to do with anyone. Guilt, or perhaps embarrassment, was gnawing at her very soul. Abigail Crawford, ever the optimist, tried to get her to talk, but her efforts were in vain. Joshua surveyed them all, sizing them up. They'd have to weather out this storm, and then they could escape to fight another day. He sighed, picked up his carbine, and trekked out a short distance. The Spartan found a thick, sturdy log that would support his two tons and took a seat. The wood creaked and moaned under him, but it held firm. Raindrops hit his armored shell but did not deter him from his vigil.

He'd keep watch until he could make sure that those under his command, however temporarily, were safe.


	8. One Final Effort

**Hello, and welcome to the penultimate chapter of Lest We Be Forgotten! Before I continue, I want to thank Alerik666, TMDF-Artyom, Epic Zealot Productions 2.0, mynameisjeff7, Husebad, Novawolf13, Nightwing Aurora and Supreme Commander for favoriting and/or following my story. It's you guys, plus all the readers who've followed my story, who give me the passion to write. Over 300 people have viewed my story, and I'm honestly humbled. Thank you all so much! I'm honored to present to you this chapter. It's the longest by far, but I definitely think you'll love it. Major revelations, an intense battle, and a show of firepower from both the Covenant and the UNSC. The final chapter will take quite some time to write, I'm afraid, and it'll serve as an epilogue to the events of the events on Endymion. Enjoy, and stay tuned! As always, if you have something to say, or if you want more info on the story, send me a comment or a PM.**

"You still awake?"

"Yeah...yeah." There it was, that inevitable, heartbreaking sigh. Valerie Schumacher bit her lip. She was nestled next to the forlorn Jackson DeWitt, at the edge of their little group huddled under the small bluff-as far away from the...traitorous?-no, not traitorous, but certainly disloyal-Mary Hong as she could be. She still thought the clean-shaven, barely-tanned, very strong DeWitt was attractive-and who could blame her? They were stuck on a planet with just a slim chance of rescue. He'd been nice to her before...why couldn't he be single? Schumacher pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind. The man was married, and she thought back to what he'd said so long ago in the supermarket. He couldn't steal him from his wife. She was better than that. She shook her head and breathed out slowly. "I hate the rain," DeWitt muttered, looking up at the dreary sky. "Everything bad always happens in the rain."

"It seems to be stopping a bit," Schumacher calmly noted.

"Yeah…" came the reply **.** "Yeah." The gunnery sergeant frowned, looking up at DeWitt. His gaze was cast up, unblinking, unflinching.

 **xxx**

'Well, Isamu, you really screwed up now,' the soldier thought sadly. His eyes were closed, and his hands were clasped against his chest, deep in the pretense of sleep. His mind was active though, running through the events of the last few days. Endymion had been his home; he'd been born in a settlement a hundred miles from Coira, known as Port Vernon. He'd been warned of the wilderness; he'd enjoyed the fine beer and sweets; he'd seen the skyscrapers rise up and, for a time, greeted tourists as they came through the spaceports. He was a son of Endymion through and through. He was born there and now he'd surely die there. But for what, he found himself asking, he didn't know. There was nothing left on Endymion. Nothing for him, at least. He scoffed, breaking the façade of being asleep, at the thought of miners a century in the future uncovering his remains from the glass that would inevitably blanket the planet.

"What's so funny?" he heard someone ask. It was one of the Marines sitting next to him-Ricardo Sastre.

"Nothing at all," Ban answered, casually waving his hand in a dismissive fashion. "I must've been dreaming."

 **xxx**

Sergei Tarkov was humming. At first, he couldn't tell what he was humming, but before long he recognized the tune: it was the same one played at his cousin's funeral. Kevin Stark, Staff Sergeant. Serial number 56327-91200. Killed during one of the first battles of the war. He mouthed the words of the haunting dirge to himself, his visage twisting into a frown as he did so. His Helljumpers called him gruff, grim, steely. And he prided himself on being all three. But as he thought back, to all the battles he'd fought in, to all the scars he'd gained, to all the comrades he lost in the fires of war, he realized that, above all, he was afraid. On the outside, he was a stoic leader, determined to lead Omega Two-Seven to victory. But he'd failed time and time again; Cross was dead, and so were Jonas, Deans, Halter, Corchetti...all troops he'd fought with, who had trusted him, who had perished. He'd be damned if he saw another one of his ODSTs fall to those Covenant bastards.

He was, of course, powerless to prevent their demises. He was just one man, but he was proud to be a friend as well as a leader. He took care of those under his command and, in return, they made him have something worth fighting for. Tarkov pinched the bridge of his nose and looked around him. These people had given up so much. His eyes met with Monique Washington's,who was sitting next to him. She smiled slightly, just to help get spirits up again, and her LT returned the favor.

 **xxx**

She'd always faced adversity. She'd always felt like...nothing she had even done was enough. Abigail Crawford had joined the Corps, like she told her sergeant, to help people, and to feel like she was part of something greater than herself. But another part of her said that she'd joined to prove her own self-worth. She constantly thought herself a failure; unable to find a job, unable to be outgoing enough to have friends. Constantly reminded that her siblings were so much better than her, usually by her own subconscious. Abby wrapped her arms around her knees, trying to feel warmth. She felt like a fish out of water, way in over her head. At this point, she didn't want to be a Marine, she wanted to be a...person, with friends, hobbies, a life…

She choked back a sob, looking around to make sure no one saw her. Of course they didn't; they never did. They never noticed the little things she did. She always tried to have a smile on her face, telling patients it would all be okay-even as they slipped away in her arms. Gerencer, Turay, all the others...especially Hong...they'd treated her like a kid.

Was she feeling angry? She hoped not. That wasn't going to help anyone.

That was all she wanted to do...and maybe one day, someone would help her.

 **xxx**

'Why did I do it?' Mary Hong had asked herself time and time again. She didn't have an answer. Maybe she was afraid of dying. Maybe she was angry with the Sergeant and everyone else still. But, having seen those vicious beasts tear apart a group of innocent people, she was confident she wouldn't leave the group again. She might be court-martialed for desertion of duty, but that hardly scared her anymore. She shifted to make herself more comfortable, accidentally kneeing the woman beside her in the leg. Her mouth opened to apologize, although the Marine didn't seem too bothered by it, so she refrained from saying anything. Hong leaned back against the small rocky outcropping they were all huddled against, looking up at the dark sky with a look of indignation.

Maybe, just maybe, she had left because she was just sick with everything. She just wanted to get away from it all, to be alone...yeah, that had to be it.

It had to be.

 **xxx**

The rain came hurtling down a little harder now. It turned most of the dirt farther away from the little rocky outcropping into a thick soup of grass, sticks and mud. Jennifer Rosche didn't particularly mind her boots getting dirty, and she knew the Spartan didn't, either. He sat on a massive, gnarled log, somewhat hunched over, hands clasped together, his head moving side to side very slowly, as if looking for something. Rosche walked up behind him, her strides making sloshing sounds in the dirt. Joshua looked behind him, just barely. Seeing as she wasn't a threat, he nodded and resumed his vigil.

"Josh? Can I sit here?"

The Spartan took a few seconds before replying. "Of course, corporal." He shifted over a few feet, the wood creaking beneath him, and Rosche gently took her place next to him. "Try not to distract me or anything. I need to make sure we weren't followed," he said, not quite looking at her.

The Helljumper smiled softly and looked up at the sky, blinking her eyes whenever a raindrop fell too close to them. "If it weren't for the stupid rain, this might be like a camping trip," she said suddenly. "My parents and I always used to go."

"And this concerns me...how?" Joshua pivoted, turning his body to gaze in another direction, past the small outcropping the others were beneath. He sounded agitated. "I told you not to distract me."

"Because you're so worried about everyone's safety," the woman said sarcastically. "You can't save everyone, Josh. Boomer's already dead, Hurthes was killed right in front of us...and you were just a minute too late to save him." She glared at the armored back of the Spartan, watching for some kind-any kind-of emotional response. When Jennifer Rosche was answered by nothing except the howling wind and rain, she narrowed her eyes and continued, in a more sympathetic voice. "You can't be a savior, Josh. You know that. I know that."

Joshua suddenly turned towards her, dipping his head slightly to look clearly at her. "Why do you keep calling me 'Josh?' I'm your superior, a Spartan. We're not on a first-name basis."

"Ah, but you want to be," Rosche smiled. "You don't want to constantly do all the dirty jobs...I mean, burying chewed-up, torn-apart corpses?" Her face twisted grotesquely just remembering the disgusting state those bodies had been in. "Am I correct in presuming that you, being in charge all the time, constantly being reminded that you're more important than any of us might just be a little…" She sucked in a breath from between clenched teeth, struggling to find the right word.

"Tiring?" Joshua responded, but that was only a suggestion. His shoulders slumped, and his resulting sigh could be heard offworld...at least, that's what it seemed to the stunned Rosche. "I am tired," he continued. "And you're right: it's unnerving being so damn important. But that's not why I want you to be safe...and comfortable. It's just in my personality. Ever since I was young, I wanted people...no. No. I need to focus." He dismissed Rosche curtly with the quick wave of an arm. "Go back to the others."

In the distance, many miles away, lightning struck a mountainside…or perhaps it was a lance of plasma, instead. Rosche blinked once, and it was gone; good, that meant it was only lightning. She cleared her throat and got off the log, crossing her arms behind her back. "You want to make sure no one else has to suffer. I get it. It's…" She smiled, but if the Spartan saw that, he offered no inclination that he had. "It's noble," she continued. "It reminds me of my brother."

Again, no response.

"He always wanted to help people. He took out the trash, helped clean the dishes, always kept his room spotless, and helped other kids with their homework whenever they asked. Mom and Dad used to say he was the perfect child. In many ways, he was." Her head tilted like a petite bird, as if looking at Joshua-029 in a new light. "He sort of looked like you, too…" she said in a dream-like tone.

This evidently piqued the Spartan's interest and, in a rare move, he slowly removed his helmet, letting rain barrage his scarred face. His steely blue eyes, like lanterns lighting his pale features, were fixed on his companion's face. Rosche activated her TACPAD and navigated to a certain picture. In it, a young boy, no older than six or seven years old, stood happily in between two people who were obviously his parents. They all had sculpted faces, cerulean eyes, light skin and thin dark brown hair. Joshua's eyes widened as he noticed the uncanny resemblance. "No...older pictures of him?"

Rosche frowned. "He...umm...he died when he was seven, just a few days after his birthday."

"Hmm...I'm sorry for your loss," the Spartan responded, nodding with understanding.

The Helljumper smiled lightly, and watched as her companion put his bulky helmet back on, once again obscuring his emotions. "Thank you. It's been thirty years since he died, before I was even born...his name was Joshua, too, by the way. Funny, isn't it? He had so much in common-"

"Sshhh." Joshua got up, knees bent very slightly, right arm in Rosche's direction, with two fingers pointing at her. The wind continued to howl like before, and rain kept on pouring, but something was very wrong.

 **xxx**

Joshua gripped the carbine magnetically attached to his backside and hefted it into a ready position, sweeping the area in front of him. Beyond the small clearing he and...Jennifer...were in, there was nothing but trees. Tall, twisted, gnarled ones, behind, to the sides...everywhere. The ODST moved to grab the M6 pistol that was clipped to her thigh armor, loading it quietly and held it up close to her face. "What's wrong?" she whispered. Joshua didn't answer; he still had to figure that out himself. He had first smelled something. Something damp and pungent, but until recently he hadn't been able to pick it up clearly. Now something else was wrong: the motion tracker on his HUD was lighting up. Solid grey dots were moving off to his left, and up ahead. But there were so many of them-stopping, disappearing every once in awhile, but enough for him to know a large group was moving through the woods and doing a damn good job of moving stealthily. Seventy-five meters now, and closing. He whipped his head around in that direction.

"Wake the others," he breathed. "Now." Rosche wasted no time in running the short distance to her lieutenant and shaking him awake. Joshua peered into the darkness. Thunder bellowed like a gunshot, and lightning flashed maybe half a mile away, illuminating a large hill in the distance. Joshua thought he saw something...many somethings...moving, but couldn't be sure. The smell was stronger now, but he'd be damned if he couldn't see anything…

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four seconds. Absolutely no sound. Joshua tuned out the rain and felt an icy chill arc up his spine. It seemed like time itself was standing still. But something was still out there…

"AAAAARRGH!" An earsplitting, banshee-like cry pierced the eerie stillness. Joshua whirled around to where the other humans were clumped together and saw a few of them burning in flames, writhing and shrieking in pain as flesh and clothes alike were purged from their bodies...a circle of flame spread around the charred corpses, and one of the humans had to be pulled away as he swatted out patches of fire eating away at his Army gear. The Spartan was stunned, and he couldn't tear his eyes away from this scene of absolute terror...until a glob of plasma slammed into his right side. The soldier flinched and his hand briefly touched the affected area of his armor; luckily all its systems seemed to be operating well. He peered into the darkness of the forest and saw, barely visible,what appeared to be outlines of large, hulking, upright animals. 'Brutes,' Joshua thought, and a pang of panic raced through his mind. These Brutes were using active camouflage, rendering them all but invisible to the naked eye. Joshua aimed his carbine at one spot of distortment among the trees and quickly pulled the trigger. Six green slugs slammed into the apparition, revealing itself to be one of the hairy members of the Covenant hegemony, albeit with wisps of green smoke emanating from where Joshua's rounds had impacted. Covenant carbine rounds were highly radioactive, and this Brute toppled to the ground, groaning slightly, close to death. His assailant ducked underneath the flechette rounds of a Brute Spiker weapon, hearing them thud into the wood of a nearby tree, and bent down to snap the Brute's neck. He scoured the body for ammo or weapons, coming away with only a stubby Spiker with three extra ammunition cartridges. A squeal behind him alerted him to a pair of Grunts sneaking up, their plasma pistols flaring. Two carbine blasts, fired quicker than the blink of an eye, caved in their heads.

Joshua heard a human cry of terror from somewhere not too far away. Gunshots sounded as well, louder than the wind and rain, and he became painfully aware that he'd been separated from the rest of the human troops. Unfortunately, an apparent army of Covenant seemed to be in between him and the others. He saw flashes of plasma and the shapes of alien warriors between the trees, and the air was acrid with the scent of blood and burnt flesh. A guttural cry alerted him to another Brute, armed with a vicious Brute Shot grenade launcher, lunging at the Spartan from his left flank. Joshua fell back slowly, firing with his purloined gun, but his adversary caught the man in the chest with a round from its own weapon. The red-armored warrior grunted in pain and spun around, desperately trying to maintain his balance, but continued his barrage of razor-sharp spikes. A second grenade barely missed his right leg, and instead exploded with a shower of dirt a meter behind him. The various spikes impaled in the Brute's body finally got to it, and it collapsed, falling forward in a spray of blood like a 1,200-pound marionette. The Spartan reloaded his Spiker and clipped it to his thigh armor, choosing to pull out the carbine again despite only having ten rounds left. Around him, alien troops were rushing through the forest, barely paying him any mind, so he took aim and brought a pair of fleet-footed Jackals down while they didn't notice him.

The element of surprise gone, he turned his attention towards an enraged group of Grunts and Jackals which were jumping over logs in an attempt to flank him. Joshua dropped to one knee and blasted away, killing three of each species with a single pellet left to spare. A buzzing above was the only indication of a flight of Drones that suddenly detached from the treetops and unleashed a storm of pink needles and globs of emerald plasma, catching their adversary completely unaware. He took one down with a shot straight through its carapace, then tossed away the depleted carbine and removed his Spiker, spraying the air with shards. With a single-handed sweeping motion, and a finger firmly clutched to the alien weapon's trigger, his spikes made half a dozen more Drones careen down from the sky, their dying screeches echoing eerily in his ears. Joshua tried, and failed, to ignore the stinging pinpricks across his body caused by the needles and plasma blasts that had hit their target as he continued to assault the Covenant.

'I don't know if I can take much more of this,' he admitted to himself. He knew he had to, though. Every Covenant soldier he killed was one less the surviving humans would have to contend with.

The sound of shredding metal blasted through the air as he fired on a group of eager aliens from behind. Three Grunts, a pair of Jackals, even a low-flying Drone...each one fell to the ground as they ran, their backs caved in by Spiker rounds. Joshua just finished reloading as the rest of the Covenant whirled around to face him. The nearest Brute's ape-like face contorted as it huffed violently at him, but Joshua noticed something else in its rain-soaked expression: a glimmer of fear. His armor was battered and covered in mud, and parts of it were scarred by plasma. Were he any other human, he would appear weak, like a mouse to the circling hawks that were the Covenant. But he was a Spartan, a demon. He'd make his enemies feel afraid.

(Although the circling part, he noted, was entirely true. His motion sensor picked up Covenant all around him.)

Without waiting for the Brute to make a move, Joshua let loose. He dashed towards it, firing until it dropped. He grabbed a plasma grenade lying next to the corpse of a Grunt and flung it through the trees, where more Covenant were quickly moving to surround him. The bright flash of blue light, coupled with the shrieks of dying aliens, told Joshua he'd hit his mark. A plasma rifle, scavenged off the body of a Jackal, joined the Spartan's Spiker in a harmony of death, sizzling through the bones and flesh of any foolhardy Covenant soldier that got too close. With a final burst of metal, the Spiker ran out of ammo, so Joshua, hunkered between the bodies of his enemies, scoured for a new weapon. Two plasma pistol rounds tore holes into the methane pack of a deceased Grunt next to him, and the pyramidal orange canister ruptured in a small, yet dangerous, explosion. The Spartan, weakened by the toll of the raging battle, collapsed to one side, flung by the blast. His seven-foot frame impressed upon the soft dirt, and he moaned in agony.

Hearing the rustling of Covenant coming ever closer, Joshua reached for his plasma rifle and sat up as quickly as his injured body let him. Blue bolts melted into the armor of an approaching Brute, and Joshua took a few steps backwards, crouching as he blasted away. The Brute clutched at its chest and fired wildly into the sky. As it fell to its knees, Joshua advanced and cracked his alien rifle at its head, caving in the 'ape's' cheek and letting its dying body tumble over. A few more blasts to the face ended that Brute, but many more were streaming towards Joshua, shrieking and howling in a cacophony of bloodlust. The Spartan sprinted away, whirling around upon reaching a higher vantage point in the form of a small hill, and let off a steady barrage of plasma from his rifle. It overwhelmed the shield of a vicious Jackal that had the misfortune to charge up the hill before its comrades, and the circular wall of energy dissipated, allowing Joshua to eliminate the threat. As the Jackal tumbled down the grassy slope, a hush fell about the Covenant and they actually began to take tentative steps back. The red-armored warrior checked the charge on his rifle and, seeing as it was almost completely depleted, he discarded it.

A tall, vicious-looking Brute, with a jagged mouth, a thick beard and sturdy limbs decked out in golden armor emerged almost regally from the crowd. It snarled up at the Spartan and took out a long, curved knife. Joshua grimaced as the Brute uttered a challenge: "Demon! I am Karkavus, most feared of my pack! Face my might and be destroyed!"

 **xxx**

Karkavus had never felt more alive. He'd killed his fair share of massive beasts and, a few times, fearsome fellow Jiralhanae. But those battles were nothing compared to this. Today, he was going to slay a Demon.

But what a pathetic demon it was. The human smelled of blood and dirt and water, not quite what Karkavus expected from one of the infamous warriors. It looked weak and wounded; the Major knew this would be an easy fight. With a tremendous roar, he charged at the Demon, raising his knife to cut it down. At the last moment, though, the human sidestepped, but its evasion was slow enough that it allowed the Jiralhanae to pivot to his left and still bring the knife down hard, albeit now aimed at the shoulder instead of the chest. With a quick flick of the wrist, the Demon suddenly brought out a blade of its own from a sheathe on its shoulder pauldron: darker in color and smaller in size, but nonetheless sharp and deadly. It parried Karkavus's attack, and their knifes clanged together and rebounded apart with a harsh noise. Karkavus grunted and tried an underhanded approach at his opponent's emotionless helmet, but the infernal creature ducked and took two strides backwards. As thunder rolled ominously in the distance, a single flash of green zipped through the space between the two combatants. A single Unggoy Ultra, standing towards the front of the mob watching the spectacle, was firing wildly in the direction of the Demon. The Major nodded once and one of his Minors, Brindel, tore the pitiful crustacean's gas mask off with one powerful swipe. The midget gurgled once, clutched desperately at its gaping mouth, and slumped over. That would teach the lesser species to listen when their betters told them not to attack.

The Demon twirled its knife in its right hand, causing Karkavus to anticipate a jab and bring his knife across his chest defensively. But his opponent's move was only a feint: its left hand snapped out and squeezed Karkavus's left wrist. The Jiralhanae could've simply shaken the hand away, but decided instead to try his luck at stabbing down again, and he brought his right hand upwards. In a flash, however, the red-armored human's hand retracted, and the Major realized with a sudden stab of terror that his enemy had a clear chance to strike at his neck.

If he could see the Demon's face, he wouldn't be surprised to see it smirking. As the quick blow came, and the meaty, mighty mass of Karkavus fell backwards with a trail of blood arcing through the damp air, he had only one final thing to think about: he'd been outplayed. To the Demon, he'd been nothing. Another one of thousands of dead, faceless Covenant to add to its list.

 **xxx**

Joshua slashed at a screeching Jackal, bending down in a fluid motion and stealing its shield gauntlet. He switched it on and breathed a sigh of relief as its shimmering form absorbed some of the plasma that flew his way.

The Spartan crouched down, trying to cover his entire body with the shield, but it vanished under the firepower of a hundred Covenant in a murderous rage at the death of their leader. Joshua took off at breakneck speed down the hill and towards where he'd left the other humans, but a rainbow of plasma kept flying towards him. A pair of carbine bolts to the back brought him facedown in the leaves. His HUD picked up the enemy swarming closer...and then he heard a low whine followed by deep explosions not too far behind him. A yellow dot on the motion teacher was hustling towards his location. A hand pushed on his shoulder, and a worried...sisterly...voice was asking, pleading for him to get up. "Josh, we have to go!" Jennifer whispered to him.

Crouching, Jennifer had one hand on the trigger of a heavy fuel rod cannon, and she was blasting away at the Covenant. A ruined tangle of burnt torsos and limbs lay at the foot of the hill barely twenty meters away, and the aliens that hadn't been blown apart in the sudden counterattack were regrouping behind the hill. "Oh, thank God you're alright," Jennifer smiled as the Spartan gingerly got to his feet. She put the fuel rod cannon down and presented him with a magnum, which he accepted with a thankful nod. The pair turned to look at the amassing enemy. As the Helljumper reloaded, she gazed up at the towering warrior. "You go. I'll hold them off." Her tired, battered face betrayed her outward toughness.

"No. I don't give a damn about how important I might be," Joshua responded. "I'm not leaving my sister behind." Jennifer's icy blue eyes lit up with warmth and comfort. Joshua suspected that she finally felt at peace.

Even when Covenant lines split into two and flanked the humans, Jennifer's aim never faltered. Each fuel rod blast blew half a dozen aliens to pieces. Her brother picked off Grunts and Drones to their left, his body as still and straight as a statue. Plasma and spikes were deflected off the shield he kept on his crooked arm. A plasma grenade landed right next to him, so he gathered up his sister, tugging on her and jumping away from the explosion. They were both out of breath and out of ammo. "How many do you reckon we got?" Jennifer asked exhaustedly.

"Maybe a hundred," Joshua answered. "Maybe more." The two humans slowly stood up to find themselves surrounded by aliens. Jennifer had her hands raised in surrender.

It wasn't raining anymore.

 **xxx**

After the firebomb had first gone off, there'd been a mad scramble amongst the survivors. Hong, Niequist and Sastre had been burnt to a crisp immediately, and Ban had been moderately singed. Rosche had run off who-knows-where, and the rest of the troops tried to rally away from the flames and charred skeletons of their allies. The shooting had started then-needles thudded into Sergeant Schumacher's arm and back, and ODST Washington caught a Brute Shot grenade to the back of her knee. In a cry of anger, Lieutenant Tarkov had screamed for his Marines to get away. He'd pulled out an assault rifle and a river of bullets cut down a pair of Grunts closing in. He'd leapt to cover behind a fallen log as fuel rod blasts ruined Washington-another person he'd let down-and sprayed at a pack of Drones overhead. Through the inky darkness, he'd seen a large amount of alien soldiers just melding away from the woods, unleashing a barrage of pink and blue and green...eventually, after taking down at least a dozen of them, always pausing to reload, Tarkov found himself staring down the barrel of a Spiker. The last thing he felt was the incredible pain of the iron spikes shredding his face, but at least he knew that he'd given the others a chance at survival.

 **xxx**

His boots were heavy after sloshing through so many thick puddles, and his back was killing him, but Jackson DeWitt had to press on. He and his fellow Helljumper Cortez had their arms around the shoulders of Schumacher and Ban, respectively, trying to support their weight as they fled from the vicious aliens. The young medic Crawford was a good distance ahead; the poor girl was no doubt terrified. Schumacher gasped in pain as she tried to move her arm, so DeWitt warned her to keep still. The crystal shards embedded in her back and left arm looked painful, but the other wounded member of their part pay had it even worse. Isamu Ban's uniform was in tatters, and most if the skin on his left side was a violent shade of smoky black. His constant whimpering was annoying, but DeWitt realized after a while that the soldier was probably whimpering to reassure himself that he was still alive. Cortez did his best to calm Ban down, but the torrent of rain probably felt like tiny daggers to the poor Army man's skin.

Cortez and DeWitt shared a knowing glance. Without medical attention, Ban would succumb to his wounds within hours and Schumacher would likely die from internal bleeding. Crawford was a skilled medic, but she didn't have the tools available to save them. "I swear, if there isn't a hospital in the next clearing…" DeWitt half-joked through clenched teeth.

Cortez nodded knowingly. "We're really up shit creek, eh?" There was nervousness in his voice.

"We're not out of it yet!" Crawford cried out from up ahead. "Look!" The ODSTs carefully walked over to see what had intrigued the young medic. They were astonished to find themselves overlooking a valley, with a box canyon fifty meters below them and a gentle waterfall sloping down the opposite side and ending in a lake in the midst of the canyon. The whole area was at least a mile in all directions, but it was hard to accurately tell because of the poor weather. The downpour also made it difficult to discern a path down, which Crawford noted.

"We'll find a way," DeWitt stated. He unwound his arm from around Schumacher and left her sitting near some rocks, and then took careful steps towards the ledge, dropping down on his hands and knees to avoid slipping. His eyes scanned down into the valley, looking for a path.

"We have to go around," Cortez whispered. "If we stay here, the Covies will be on us in seconds." Ban moaned softly in agreement.

"I...I see your point." DeWitt picked Schumacher back up carefully and wound his arm around her shoulders to support her. He noticed Crawford staring listlessly down into the valley. "Abigail, let's move."

"Hang on," the young medic responded with caution. "There's something down there." She pointed a finger at the valley below. As the ODSTs looked closer, they noticed that, in one place in the center of the valley, rain seemed to slope off in thin air, as if rolling off the back of some invisible animal...or an invisible ship. Before any if the others had time to react, Cortez primed a grenade and left it in a rocky crag at their feet.

"Run!" he shouted, and the others wasted no time complying. The resulting explosion blew rocks and dirt off into the valley, and they waited silently in hopes it had been bright enough to see down below.

Sharp noises echoed their way through the darkness, ands trio of pink needles ricocheted off the wet rocks, much to the surprise of the gathered humans. A lance of Covenant had caught up to them, the rain masking their scent and movements, and their prey had been put in an inescapable position. Cortez and DeWitt fired battle rifle rounds at their opponents, while Crawford added short bursts of SMG bullets to the fray. Under their combined firepower, five Grunts, three Jackals and a Brute were cut down, but all three had been hit by plasma rounds. They didn't have the strength to move on, much less carry the wounded any further.

As they lay on the cold stone, the rain stopped considerably. From the gloomy canyon beneath them, an opaque shape gradually grew clearer as it hovered closer. When the object was unveiled from its transparency, it was revealed to be a massive metal starship, black as night and equipped with an altogether bat-like visage, culminating in stubby wings that slowed down as if to fasten a cloak. Blue and red lights blinked across the exterior, and a great spotlight beamed down upon them.

White letters emblazoned the gargantuan ship as the UNSC Auld Lang Syne.

 **xxx**

"Jennifer!" The Spartan slid his helmet off and looked at her: her pale skin, curly brown hair, the slight scars crisscrossing her face. She looked afraid. "Jennifer, listen to me. Mom and Dad are proud of you." The ODST bit her lip and nodded sadly as a hulking Brute stepped closer to her and cocked a mauler. Behind Joshua, three more of the primate-like aliens had their own weapons pointed at the Spartan's back. He looked up at the sky and saw that the rain had stopped.

"They loved you, you know that. That's all that matters," Joshua consoled her. Tears streamed down her dirty cheeks as she gulped.

"They'd be proud of you too, Josh," she said at last. "We'll see you on the other side. As a family!" The blue-armored Brute shoved her on her knees and fired point-blank into her skull. The sound of bone crunching filled the air for an eerie moment, and Jennifer Rosche, the sister Joshua had been gifted with knowing for far too short a time, was gone.

Her body lay still, smoke wisping up from a hole in her head. For the first time in years, Spartan-029 wanted to cry. "You're next, Demon," the Brute growled unforgivingly.

It took all three of the apes behind him to drag Joshua to his knees. They beat him, slamming their Maulers into his damaged armor, until he put his hands behind his head and bowed in submission. His body shuddered as a stubby metal barrel was pushed against the side of his head. He came to the chilling conclusion that, if he didn't act fast, he'd die.

The Spartan swung his arms downward with all his might, crushing the gun beneath their weight and causing the array of flechette pellets to gouge themselves into the dirt beneath his head...and the leg of a nearby Brute Minor. His fists lashed out and pushed the Brute who'd killed his sister down, and, whirling to his feet, he punched at the jaw of a third Brute. One final uppercut decked the fourth one, and the Spartan bent down to retrieve his Operator-class helmet. The surrounding Covenant were caught entirely unaware as he sprang off through the forest.

Breathlessly, he felt around his body for wounds, and wasn't surprised with the many he found. His MJOLNIR armor was pitted and scarred, but beneath that, so was his heart. He had just discovered, with near-certainty, that he had had a baby sister. There were so many similarities between himself and Jennifer's brother that they had to be the same person.

'Wishful thinking,' he thought, trying to push the thoughts of Jennifer out of his mind...but he couldn't. She'd died for him. She'd gone her whole life thinking her brother was dead...and now, she was the one who was dead, without a grave or even a cairn, and nobody to remember her by except for him. He'd remember her, Joshua found himself promising, not even because they were (probably) siblings, but because it's what he'd do for any service member he formed a friendship with.

Joshua pushed himself to the limit, trying to get away. Suddenly, the sun broke through the clouds, and beams of light danced throughout the sky. The Spartan couldn't help but look up in a sense of wonder...and see the 162-meter UNSC Prowler flying through the air towards him. His mouth agape, Joshua watched as the ship fired its complement of warheads at the forest behind him, obliterating huge swaths of land along with the Covenant occupying them. Trees, rocks, streams, animals and aliens alike were disintegrated, leaving behind a massive crater. Joshua found himself knocked to the ground by the force of the blasts. He was still lying in a daze, squinting as if annoyed by the gall Endymion had to look so damned beautiful when the planet was being destroyed, when a team of ONI SpecOps troopers found him and stretchered him onboard the Auld Lang Syne.

 **xxx**

"Can you hear me? Ma'am?" Valerie Schumacher opened her eyes to see Abby Crawford waving her hand in front of her face. Her face lit up when her sergeant nodded.

"Where are we?" the sergeant croaked. Her surroundings were unfamiliar and somewhat harsh: a dark grey room with calming white lights. She was lying in a hospital-type bed, with an IV sticking out of her arm and monitors displaying her vitals all around her. To her right was a little nightstand with a blue ceramic lamp on it. Straining her neck to see to her left, Schumacher noticed a curtain. The only thing that would indicate they weren't in any average hospital was the lack of any sort of window.

"The UNSC prowler Auld Lang Syne," Crawford reported. "En route to the Inner Colonies." Schumacher could make out other doctors, wearing white coats and sterilizing gloves, waiting for Crawford to move. Before she could indicate that to the younger woman, two more figures walked out from behind the curtain: the ODSTs, both devoid of armor and wearing matching grey fatigues. Schumacher's heart skipped a beat when she saw how handsome DeWitt looked-evidently he, Cortez and Crawford had gotten time to take showers. "Sirs," Crawford said, saluting. The Helljumpers nodded in response.

Someone was missing. "Where's Isamu?" Schumacher asked.

"Behind this curtain," came a quick reply from one of the doctors. "We applied gel to his burnt skin and grafted it in places. He's unconscious now, but Specialist Ban should pull through." Valerie Schumacher lay her head back and sighed deeply. Sure, Ban might live, and she was thankful of that, but so many people had died.

"Were we the only survivors?" she asked forlornly. "After all that, and-"

"No," the doctor interrupted. "SPARTAN-029 was also recovered."

Schumacher blinked. She hadn't even considered Joshua as part of their group! Maybe it was just the aura of...superiority he exuded. He wasn't like a normal Marine, or a normal soldier...he was something more, although she didn't think he enjoyed it too much. "So...six people. I...I just can't…"

"They're in a better place," DeWitt consoled her. "We should be so lucky." His gaze was far off, as if he was remembering something. Even his fellow Helljumper was staring at him with a look of confusion.

"The hell are you going on about?" Cortez asked.

DeWitt shook his head in annoyance. "Just...never mind."

"If there's something I should know…"

"Drop it, Oscar." DeWitt shot him a scathing look and stalked off.

Cortez looked offended, and followed him. "What the hell, man?" Crawford looked at her sergeant quickly, shrugged, and followed them. Schumacher rolled her eyes and settled in her bed. Her eyes shut and she was asleep within moments.

 **xxx**

As one ODST moved in an angry daze down the hallways of the ONI ship, the other was right on his tail. Naval Intelligence personnel eyed them oddly, but generally let them be...until DeWitt ran headfirst into a shorter, but still extremely intimidating, woman wearing the insignias and uniform of a Navy Captain. Her name tag read 'Polis.' "ODSTs. Everyone's been saying you're causing a ruckus on my ship. Explain yourselves."

DeWitt and Cortez glumly saluted. "Well, Captain, I...you see, I was hit by a couple plasma rounds back on Endymion and...well, one of them hit my rucksack. I was carrying my wedding ring in there, and it got des...destroyed." The lighter-skinned, lighter-haired Marine's eyes grew misty, and Isabelle Polis gazed at him sorrowfully.

"I'm sure your wife won't mind," she said, patting his shoulder.

"It's not like she can...she...umm...she died." The other ODST's mouth gaped.

"Jack? What do you mean Wendy died? When were you going to tell us?"

DeWitt shuffled his feet and avoided all eye contact. "About two years ago. It was dark and raining and...she was hit by a car." Polis, Cortez and everyone else in earshot were stunned. "The reason I never told anyone was because I didn't want any sympathy. People would be so damn overprotective of me if they knew my death would make my daughter an orphan...I didn't want it to be a distraction." His face was gripped in sadness, and he wiped away tears welling in his eyes. Cortez took a step towards his teammate, but DeWitt brushed him off. "I'll be fine, Oscar. I just need to sort some things out...that's all."

 **xxx**

No one had asked her about the whole experience. Three days, marooned on a world besieged by the Covenant, and not a single person had asked Abby Crawford how she'd felt. The medic was sitting idly in the Auld Lang Syne's tiny mess hall, watching a handful of ONI spooks murmur to each other at a table of their own. She was alone, naturally, without even a plate of food to keep her company. As she sat, growing sleepier, she heard the door whisk open. A man, unnaturally tall in stature, and with short brown hair and piercing blue eyes, came in and sat at a nearby booth. It was the Spartan, Crawford realized, except he didn't have his red armor on. Without it, he was still unmistakably a soldier-he stood straight and moved like a robot. But his helmet couldn't hide his scarred face anymore. The young woman-hesitantly, in fear of being rude-looked closer at him.

He was calmly looking at his clasped hands, hardly moving. Just as Crawford was wondering what he might be thinking about, the raven-haired captain of the prowler entered the room. She immediately sought out Joshua, who stood up and saluted as she approached. "Sierra Zero-Two-Nine. I need to see you on the bridge."

"Of course, Captain Polis," the Spartan replied, as if nothing was wrong at all.

 **xxx**

Only two Jiralhanae and a Kig-Yar had been recovered from the site of the battle, and Karkavus-or, more aptly, his body-was nowhere to be found. Shipmaster 'Moramee and Chieftain Velorus both knew that he was dead. "It is of no matter," Velorus had huffed when the Sangheili approached him, via hologram, with a haughty message of false condolences. "He died fighting a Demon. No wonder he lost."

"You had such low hopes for your brother's son, Chieftain," 'Moramee scoffed. "He died foolishly."

"I know!" The holographic visage of the Jiralhanae slammed his fists on the armrests of the floating chair he was seated on. He shook his shaggy mane and moved to cut communications. "This conversation is over, Split-lip."

'Moramee couldn't say he wasn't surprised, but he figured the Jiralhanae's anger would pass in time. Meanwhile, the Covenant still had the job of glossing the planet. They had already made promising progress, but it would take a while with only four operational ships.

The Shipmaster stared silently at a view screen of the world below. There were tiny holes peppered about it still, remnants of the battle in this very bridge. The blood had been scrubbed away, and the bodies were all gone, but the surviving Huragok, despite their technological prowess, couldn't magically repair the projectile holes or the more serious plasma scarring from the human and Covenant weaponry. The battle weighed heavily on the minds of all 'Moramee's crew, but not that of the Sangheili himself.

Yes, many of his soldiers were dead, and no, the Demon had not been killed, nor had the human construct been properly dissected, but they had still forced the humans from this world. Those miserable blasphemers were the ones fleeing into space, not the noble Sangheili.

He had that, at least, to feel proud of. 'Moramee clicked his mandibles together in contemplation. The war would do terrible things, he realized, to the souls of all Covenant.

 **xxx**

August 22, 2548

UNSC Orbital Station Omicron, in orbit over Tribute

Epsilon Eridani burned bright in the darkness of space like a beacon, illuminating the third planet of the star system, along with many of the stations orbiting it. At 0607 hours, the UNSC Auld Lang Syne jumped in-system, after completing a series of random Slipspace maneuvers to ward off any potential alien pursuers, and docked with Omicron Station. Its crew were relieved, its captain was ushered into a chamber for her report, and five happy yet remorseful survivors from Endymion were given a warm welcome back from the front lines. The first thing they asked for was how many civilians had made it off Endymion.

Four million, one hundred thousand was the final count. Slightly less than half the planet's population.

An acceptable amount.

Jackson Dewitt, Valerie Schumacher, Oscar Cortez, Abigail Crawford and Isamu Ban left the station after three days. The Auld Lang Syne departed after a week.

Nobody had seen SPARTAN-029 leave, for he had only stayed on Omicron for a few hours. He'd done what needed to be accomplished, and then he'd been called back to the war. Humanity needed its heroes; who was he to disagree?

And so, he fought. Four years later, he would die.

But he wouldn't be forgotten.


	9. After Everything

After twenty-eight years and tens of billions of lives lost, the war between humanity and the Covenant Empire was over. Most of the colonies were rendered uninhabitable, and the scars of battle were still being removed from many of the ones that remained, including Earth. To most of the humans, it was utterly unthinkable to imagine life without the war. The Covenant had always been considered threats, and now some of them were helping to rebuild the world's they'd helped destroy. Everyone, from politicians and business leaders to store clerks and schoolchildren, knew that a new age had just been ushered in, changing humanity forever. No one, however, understood this better than the soldiers. Years of combat had altered their mindsets, and now they were told to let it all go. Mankind wasn't on the defensive any longer.

Now a second lieutenant, Oscar Cortez had requested a resignation from the military on December 27, 2552, days after the last alien forces were expunged from the Sol System. To his surprise, ONI allowed him to leave, but for quite a while he feared that, with the Covenant failing to kill him, the spooks would send someone to make sure the secret of Calypso-141's death followed him to the grave. But nobody seemed to need the Spartan's false immortality as a source of morale anymore. Humankind would continue to exist, and that was all anyone cared about.

As a civilian, the first thing Oscar did was buy himself a little apartment on Juneou. He didn't really know anyone from the colony, but he remedied that by becoming acquainted with his neighbors. Of course, he always had his former squadmates to talk to as well.

After Endymion, he'd been assigned to lead a new Helljumper team. Members retired or, sadly, perished along the way, but he was immensely gladdened when, in 2550, a familiar face joined the roster: Isamu Ban. He was still the wisecracking, loophole-loving soldier from Endymion, but he'd seemed to have acquired a profoundly darker sense of humor. He was a more ruthless and efficient warrior, and seemed to take no quarrels with killing enemies, human or alien alike, when it wasn't explicitly required to take them alive. Oscar had been shocked by the transformation, but Isamu had shrugged it off when confronted over his behavior. "War changes people, sir. That's all I can tell you." The man proved himself time and time again, however. Allying with the Elites-or, Sangheili, as humans were now told to call them-affected him harshly. Before retiring, Oscar had put in the dossier he compiled on his unit that it would prove unwise to let Isamu anywhere near friendly Covenant forces until he could get past his prejudice against them.

Around the middle of January, Oscar arrived home from a trip to a nearby supermarket and, upon mindlessly checking his personal computer, discovered a message for him from a person he'd never expected to see again. 'Mr. Cortez, We'd be overjoyed if you would accept this humble invitation to attend the wedding of Phillip William Hendrickson and Abigail Brittany Crawford.' The former Helljumper smiled softly. So little Abby Crawford had finally found love! He was happy for her. Soon afterwards, he contacted Isamu to see if he'd received the same message, and he had. The wedding was to take place on March 20, and Oscar arrived in New York City, where it was going to be held, on the night of the eighteenth. He met with Isamu (and his attractive girlfriend, a civilian journalist who'd survived Endymion named Tira Ramell) the following afternoon, and they spent the day exploring the city. What caught Oscar's eye was the damage that still had to be repaired from the alien attack on the city. Many of its towering skyscrapers had been felled by plasma barrages, and the famous Central Park was now home to the crashed form of a Covenant corvette. Eyeing the construction crews and massive cranes still trying to remove the ship from the safe vantage of his hotel room, Oscar was struck by how much humanity would have to work to mend the wounds caused by the war, both physical and mental.

The next afternoon, he met up with Isamu and Tira in the spacious lobby of their hotel. Oscar chided the couple on not dressing as elegantly as he did-he was wearing a grey dress jacket and matching tie. His former teammate scoffed at him as he led his girlfriend to the automated taxi which would take them to the building the ceremony would be performed at. "If you'll notice, I'm the one with a lady on his arm, LT. Tira's fine with me dressing this way."

"Besides, it's not like we're going to be the center of attention anyways," the wavy-haired lady chimed in. This comment caused Oscar to rub his chin in thought: Abby had never...well, she wasn't very popular, to say the least. He wasn't sure about the groom, but judging by the bride's persona, he'd almost certainly be another soft-spoken, shy and courteous person. How many people would even show up?

As expected, there were less than forty people in attendance. What was interesting, though, was the locale. This wasn't some old cathedral or anything-hell, it was right in the middle of the city. The wedding was taking place at a park outside of the UNSC regional headquarters, a looming, vaguely pyramidal alabaster building. Instead of pews, there were simple park benches, and there was a thirty-foot-tall metal statue of the UNSC symbol (a phoenix sitting atop a globe, with a banner beneath it) behind the gazebo which served as an altar. Oscar shielded his eyes from the sun, set high in the windless, cloudless sky, and decided to take a cue from Tira's book and watch the guests, just to see what interesting characters Abby or her fiancée had met since '48.

Sitting at the front were obligatory family members of the couple. Behind them were a dusting of acquaintances, or maybe a few friends-Oscar felt guilty that he'd never stayed in touch with Abby, Val or Jack after Endymion. He was mulling over such guilt when a familiar woman walked down an aisle to find a seat. Looking elegant in a short, sequined turquoise dress, the woman's defining attribute was her flaming red hair. "Valerie?" Oscar exclaimed. She turned and her face lit up. "Valerie Schumacher! After all these years! How've you been?"

Valerie was delighted to be reintroduced to her two long-lost comrades. She hugged Oscar, and then Isamu, before playfully teasing the latter about his girlfriend. She explained how she, too, had been surprised to receive Abigail's message. While she hadn't kept up with Abby too much, she had taken to corresponding with Jackson DeWitt on a regular basis. "He lives on Sollister these days," she explained, referring to a verdant Inner Colony fairly close to the now-barren Epsilon Eridani system. "He spends his whole time with his daughter. Even right now, he said he couldn't come because of one of her violin recitals. When I have kids, I wish I'm even a tenth as good to them as he is to her." Valerie was quick to point out that she and Jackson weren't actually dating, although they were good friends despite living in different star systems.

While talking with Valerie, Oscar noticed a man staring at him with a look of intense concentration on his face on the other side of the aisle. Light skin, close-cropped brown hair...where had he seen this guy before? Once in awhile the man would turn his head and say something to a short blonde lady sitting beside him-obviously his wife, from the way they looked at each other. Oscar decided that he had enough time to see what the man wanted, so he excused himself from Valerie, Isamu and Tira and took a few steps across the aisle. The inquisitive stranger stood up and took a tentative step towards Iscar. He was tall and muscular, wearing a nice brown polo shirt and a small beaded rosary around his neck. The stranger rubbed his clean-shaven chin thoughtfully, and Oscar crossed his arms as the two men looked each other over. "I know you," the other man said softly in a sort of southeast URNA drawl, wagging a finger at Oscar.

"And you are…?" Oscar inquired.

"The name's Taylor Miles, but most folks just call me Dutch." Oscar' eyes widened: this was one of the Helljumpers who'd witnessed Cal-141's death on Heian!

"Dutch! It's me! Oscar Cortez, from Beta-One!" The two men grinned in recognition and clasped each other tightly. "It's damn nice to see you again, man!"

"You too, sir. You haven't aged a bit." Dutch motioned to his aisle and the woman sitting there. "This is my wife Gretchen." The woman was shorter but lithe, and her face had a few old scars crisscrossing it, although Oscar believed they only added to her charm. What struck him was the previously-unseen fact that she was in a wheelchair-in fact, her left leg below the knee wasn't there. The two shook hands nonetheless, and Oscar introduced Dutch and Gretchen to Isamu, Tira and Val. Isamu especially lingered on Gretchen's amputated leg, and asked what had happened to it.

"I stepped on an Innie landmine, but that was years ago," Gretchen casually responded.

"Well, I'm sorry for your loss. It couldn't have happened to a nicer Helljumper," Isamu replied as they shook hands.

"Likewise. I'm sorry," the blonde woman said as she moved her arm away. Isamu lifted both his arms up and clenched his hands into fists slowly.

"Is it that obvious?" he said lightheartedly.

Gretchen frowned. "Doesn't feel natural. You can feel the metal in there and everything. I guess it was too expensive for them to regrow the bone?"

Isamu grimaced, and Valerie looked on in shock. "For one arm? It would've cost a fortune, but I could've barely afforded it. But for both arms? Not a chance. Besides, the doctors said they would've had to remove existing bone and muscles, and I didn't want to go through all that." He smirked, and a dark gleam all too familiar to Oscar ever since Isamu lost his arms came to the man's eyes. "Good thing the split-lip who cut 'em off is long gone by now."

"I didn't know…" Valerie started, looking all too paralyzed, but a gentle touch on the arm by Tira led for her to drop the subject. Oscar and Dutch promised to talk again after the wedding was over, and they quickly returned to their seats.

The ceremony was fairly short, but very sweet. Valerie cried. Isamu cried. Oscar did not cry, but he was embarrassed to admit that he came awfully close. Both bride and groom were elegantly dressed, the former in a strapless gown, opera gloves and a flowing veil, and the latter in a form-fitting tuxedo and a black tie. Neither of them looked exceptionally beautiful or handsome, but they both looked like nothing in the world was more important than each other, and Oscar thought the whole affair lovely.

After the ceremony, he met with the extremely happy couple to congratulate them. As expected, the groom, Phil, was a shy, caring man. He was an inch or two shorter than his wife, but that was to be expected as he was apparently four years her junior. He had blonde hair and a clean-shaven face, along with bright, inquisitive blue eyes. The survivors of Endymion learned a lot about him-as it turned out, he worked as a reconnaissance man for ONI. The mere mention of the shadowy organization made Oscar grow nervous. Since he, Abby, Phil, Isamu, Tira and Val were all clustered around a table, with various well-wishers stopping by to talk to the newlyweds, he took an opportunity to make room for the bride's brother to take a seat, and excused himself to chat with Dutch. He found his former squadmate walking to a table with a slice of cake for his wife. "Dutch? We need to talk."

"What's up, sir?" the Helljumper responded.

"It's about...ONI." Oscar's voice dropped to a whisper. "And about Cal."

"You know Phil belongs to ONI, right?" Dutch responded, not caring about secrecy. "My team and I met him on a destroyer a week before the Covenant attacked Earth, and I fought with him for a short while during the battle itself. For a spook, he's pretty damn nice. Always keeps to himself-I'm happy for the guy."

"Yeah, I just learned. But…" Oscar gulped and raised his voice in defeat as Dutch handed the cake to his wife. "What about us? You, me and O'Brien. ONI said they'd have our hides-"

"Oh...you didn't hear?" Dutch looked sadly at his wife, and then back at his former teammate. "O'Brien didn't make it. He died at Mombasa."

The sunny day and jovial atmosphere couldn't shake a sense of dread in the ex-ODST. He was starkly reminded that people had fought and died to preserve the very planet he was on as little as three months ago. He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. "Crap."

"ONI...well, I don't know what to say. We won the war; the Spartans served their purpose. I'm not sure if they'll even be touted as these legendary soldiers anymore-"

"You know the Master Chief will be," Gretchen interrupted, gulping down a bite of cake, in a haughty tone. "That one Spartan who destroyed the first Halo installation? He's been treated as the second coming ever since then." Shaking her head, she smiled and brought another forkful of cake to her lips. "Figures. Those freaks get all the accolades while Helljumpers keep fighting and dying. Does anybody even know where any of these 'saviors of humanity' are today?"

Oscar grew uncomfortable...nervous, even. Guests were eyeing him suspiciously (or, at lest to him they seemed suspicious)...how many of them were ONI? "Do you think they'll leave us alone...after Cal, I mean."

Dutch rubbed his stubble with a quizzical expression. "It's been seven years, Oscar. The past is the past. We just need to forget about that and focus on the future." He pointed out Abby and Phil, holding hands, gazing lovingly into each other's eyes, and laughing joyously, like they were the only two people in the galaxy. "That's the future, old friend. Life, not death. Peace, not war. For the first time in a generation, the Lord's blessed us with a way forward."

The government and military were half-blind. Most of the colonies were barren wastelands. But, Oscar admitted to himself, Dutch was right. There was always hope. Life would go on.

The sky was bright and the sun was shining. A loving couple just tied the knot, and friends were reunited after years apart. There was only the quaint matter of the departed to worry about.

But why worry? Tarkov, Rosche, Cross, Washington...they were in a better place now. As long as their friends and family were still around, they wouldn't be forgotten. And what of the Spartans? Would they be remembered? Oscar thought of Cal, and even Joshua...what had happened to him? To all the Spartans? Of all the humans in the galaxy, they were the ones who deserved to be remembered the most. After all they'd done for humanity…

And he had a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn't let anyone else be forgotten, either, wherever they may be.

 **xxx**

 **United Nations Space Command Transmission 17709C-43**

 **Encryption Code: Red**

 **Public Key: File:/BLUE-TORNADO-THREE-ZENITH/**

 **To: SPARTAN-029**

 **From: Lieutenant Commander Fhajad Singh, Office of Naval Intelligence, Data Analysis Division (UNSC Serial Number 99920-37480-FS)**

 **Subject: request**

 _I've done my damnedest to uncover the records you wanted, Joshua, but there's more red tape there than I'd care to admit. We all know that the brass doesn't want our histories to leak out, lest some inquisitive conspiracy theorist (or, worse yet, a terrorist plant) uncovers the procedures we underwent as children. On the bright side, what this woman told you in August seems to be true, if my gold digging is to be believed. The mere fact that there was so much classified information on her files seems to indicate that there's something going on behind the scenes. Her birth certificate was difficult to find on its own, and I checked through various digital records from the same Skopje hospital, only to be met with brick wall after brick wall. Every other file one could possibly find was there, Joshua, but there wasn't a single mention of your supposed birth records. Death records, on the other hand? I've attached a file below. Turns out one 'Joshua Rosche' died as a child in Staselloc. If that isn't proof enough, I don't know what is. I hope this puts any demons you might have to rest, pal. I'll be seeing you soon. Good luck on your next assignment. If you need anything else, you know where to find me._

 _ **22.12.2548**_

 **xxx**

 **There you go, folks. The final chapter. The war's end. I hope you enjoyed this story, because I sure loved writing it. It was a testament to everything I had as a writer, and I'm glad to have ended it this way. My time with the characters of Halo, both of Bungie's/343's and my own creation, is far from over, don't worry. Thanks for sharing this glimpse into the Halo galaxy with me. See you starside, Spartans.**


End file.
